Two Jersey City firefighters were taken to the hospital for observation after battling a three-story residential fire on Franklin Street that tore through the roof and left dozens of residents without homes. One firefighter suffered debris injuries near the eyes, while another sustained burns to the back of the neck as crews fought heavy fire on the third floor of the Jersey City Heights building.
According to PIX11, firefighters managed to contain the spread to just one attached multi-family home despite the intensity of the blaze. EMS treated one woman at the scene for smoke inhalation, and the Red Cross is now helping three displaced residents find lodging. Separately, as reported by Patch, the fire escalated to a three-alarm response and damaged two multi-family buildings at 119 and 121 Franklin Street, with initial on-scene reports suggesting as many as 30 residents across both structures were left homeless.
A Difficult Stretch for Jersey City Fire Crews
Just five days earlier, a four-alarm blaze at 81 Boyd Avenue on the city's West Side killed 90-year-old resident Zenaida Mojica and injured a firefighter and two civilians, displacing 19 residents across five families, according to Hudson County View, whose reporting Hoodline covered in its piece on the fatal Boyd Avenue fire. Jersey City Fire Chief John Johnson said interior operations during that fatal fire were severely hampered by extreme clutter inside the residence, where stored items were piled five feet high across three second-floor rooms, hampering search and rescue efforts, per the same account relayed by News 12 New Jersey.
A Department Stretched Thin
The Jersey City Division of Fire is the largest municipal career fire department in New Jersey, maintaining approximately 680 uniformed firefighters across 15 fire stations and responding to nearly 20,000 emergency calls annually, according to the City of Jersey City. The department keeps 28 companies on duty each day, with every apparatus staffed by at least one officer and three firefighters.
Fires Collide With a Budget and Overtime Fight
The string of major fires lands amid a tense financial backdrop for the department. Jersey City fire officers filed a class-action lawsuit in Hudson County Superior Court in late August alleging the municipal government failed to pay required overtime wages dating back to June 2019, Hudson TV reported in coverage cited by Hoodline's earlier story on the unpaid overtime lawsuit. That legal fight comes as Mayor James Solomon has introduced an $874 million 2026 budget and earmarked $109 million for inherited obligations, according to the City of Jersey City.
Jersey City's fire crews are responding amid labor disputes and fiscal challenges.
