​As Myles wrote on Monday, it's high time to throw away your old, dead Christmas tree. But while doing so, please dispose of it properly! According to the blog Strollerderby, a Christmas tree was seen in flames, in the East Village, the other night. It managed to set an entire minivan on fire. (EV Grieve says this happened on 7th Street between A and 1st, and has photos -- it appears that the car's windows were blown out from the fire.)

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​We're hearing reports that there's a school bus or another vehicle on fire at 35th Street and 7th Avenue, near Macy's. The Corcoran Group has Tweeted a photo, saying, "A truck is on fire outside Macys on 7th Avenue, sounds of explosions nearby."

The FDNY tells us there is smoke in the area at 7th and 42nd Street, but they don't have confirmation on it being a school bus. "We have companies on the scene and it is developing," we were told. The call came in at 8:33 this morning.

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​This Saturday, the NYPD and FDNY are occupying (ha!) Madison Square Garden for a good cause. The NYPD Fighting Finest will fight the FDNY Bravest in the Battle of the Badges, a boxing match for charity. The boxing match is happening just a week after Veterans Day and benefits former soldiers. The proceeds will go to Long Island's Lt. James Byler, who lost both of his legs fighting in Afghanistan.

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​Former federal prosecutor Mark Cohen has been chosen as the federal court monitor who will be chosen to supervise the FDNY, the Daily News is reporting.

As we've been reporting over the past year, the city continues to be in hot water with the federal government for not enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in regards to the fire department. The FDNY is about 95 percent white, and U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that it's a "bastion of white privilege." He recently ordered that a court appointed monitor would need to oversee the fire department's hiring, promotions, and human resources, perhaps for as long as a decade.

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​Last night at Zuccotti Park, an EMT broke his leg responding to a fight and had to be taken away to in an ambulance. This was one of four fights that required security's attention at the park between 10:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. The offender in the fight that injured the EMT was also taken away in an ambulance.

When the Voice arrived on the scene around 10:30 we were greeted with a commotion on the eastern end of the park near the red structure. A man with facial tattoos and a dog had grabbed an American flag and was trying to burn it.

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​The fire department and police department paid Occupy Wall Street a visit this morning and took their power generators. The FDNY says they were looking for anything that posed a fire hazard: generators, fuel, gas tanks, etc. According to reports, the materials were removed peaceably.

This isn't a complete surprise: CBS reported on Monday that the FDNY was on the lookout for potential fire hazards in the park.

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Steven Thrasher

​The MTA has responded to the incident involving the 4 train being stuck, in smoke, under the East River last night, with which we were intimately familiar.

The (very) good news is that no one, including none of the five firefighters we left down there when our evacuation train pulled away, was hurt.

The bad news is that the MTA statement explains little more than their public address announcements on the train did last night. (Meaning, not much at all.)

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​The City of New York was back in United States District Judge Nicholas Garaufis's courtroom today, just a few weeks after the judge issued a blistering order calling the FDNY "a bastion of white male privilege."

Garaufis's order mandated that the FDNY and the city will be placed under a "Court Monitor" for the next decade or so in an attempt to force the city to diversify the fire department and bring it into compliance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The parties were in court today to begin the process of selecting who that Court Monitor will be and to touch base on how progress is coming on creating the next firefighter exam, which will be given in January.

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Last week, we had the opportunity discuss our Voice feature story "The White Mayor's Burden" on Brian Vines's BCAT show Intersect. Vines invited us to join Dr. Noel Anderson of Brooklyn College to talk about Mayor Bloomberg's Young Men's initiative.

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​FDNY Captain Paul Washington is a past president of the Vulcan Society. He was also the FDNY employee who raised the original Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint about the department's racial makeup, which joined a decades long federal lawsuit against the city and led to yesterday's landmark decision placing the FDNY under permanent injunction by the Justice Department.

We spoke to Captain Washington last night about his thoughts on the order, what it means, and if he'll be involved in the process over the next decade, the timeframe the judge expects a Court Monitor will be overseeing the department.

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