At Marcal Paper Factory and Newark Airport, Firefighters Battle Blazes and the Cold

But on Wednesday night, roads near the iconic sign in Elmwood Park were illuminated by something else: a raging blaze that felled the sign and consumed the 1940s building that supported it.

The conflagration was one of three major fires that area firefighters battled amid frigid temperatures and harsh, blustering winds brought on by a polar vortex.

At Newark Liberty International Airport, about 30 minutes south of Elmwood Park, more than a dozen cars caught fire Thursday morning on the rooftop of a parking garage, sending a huge plume of smoke into the air.

In New York, firefighters were at the scene of a five-alarm fire hours after it broke out at 3:45 a.m. Thursday at a commercial building near the boundary of the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

“These were very challenging conditions for our firefighters,” the Fire Department of New York’s acting chief of department, John Sudnik, said of the Brooklyn blaze. “However we are well-prepared.”

No injuries were reported at any of the three fires, officials said. The causes of all three fires were still under investigation.

— Elmwood Park, New Jersey: A Paper Plant in Flames

By Thursday morning, ice had covered some of the ruins of buildings destroyed when the 45,000-square-foot Marcal warehouse caught fire the night before.

Smoke continued to rise from the site as firefighters worked to control the flames and hot spots that remained.

At the eight-alarm fire’s peak, more than 300 firefighters and emergency responders were battling the blaze, Gov. Philip Murphy of New Jersey said Thursday.

The low temperatures made extinguishing the fire a challenge.

“The firetrucks were freezing. The water in the hose was actually freezing. The ladder trucks that were up in the air — some of them couldn’t be lowered because they were freezing,” said Bergen County’s executive, Jim Tedesco.

Elmwood Park residents and people traveling nearby said they could see the smoke from miles away. Courtney Gilmore, a 30-year-old Elmwood Park resident, said she could see the smoke as she commuted home Wednesday night.

While driving through the area, Gilmore said her eyes started to burn, and she had trouble breathing. Even with her car’s windows closed, the acrid smell “was awful,” she said.

In and around Elmwood Park, a community of nearly 20,000 people in northern New Jersey, the Marcal plant was known for providing working class jobs.

About 500 people were employed at the facility, said Rob Baron, chief executive of Soundview Paper Co., which now runs the plant. Nearly 200 employees were on site when the fire began, Baron said.

None of those workers were injured, officials said. But all 500 Marcal employees are now without work, Baron said. His company is planning to work with federal, state and local officials to provide assistance to the workers who were displaced.

The Marcal plant was built as part of a manufacturing business started in 1932 by Nicholas Marcalus, who came to the United States from Sicily, according to an obituary published in The New York Times in 1979.

The plant continued to operate for decades, and the warehouse held large paper rolls that were used to make paper towels, toilet paper and tissues.

“Marcal was not only the economic lifeblood of the surrounding communities, it was an icon for North Jersey,” state Sen. Nellie Pou, who represents the area, said in a statement.

The sign was also a symbol, of Elmwood Park, to drivers on Interstate 80.

“When you’re a kid, you don’t know directions,” Gilmore said. “But you know the sign.”

— Newark, New Jersey: Cars Catch Fire at a Garage

Travelers coming and going from the Newark airport were greeted by a thick cloud of smoke billowing from the top level of a parking garage Thursday morning.

Seventeen cars were damaged or destroyed when a fire broke out around 6:40 a.m. on the rooftop of a parking deck at the airport’s Terminal C, according to Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport.

Video from television news helicopters showed firefighters trying to extinguish the flames, but the fire did not appear to spread.

The fire was mostly under control by 7:40 a.m., Coleman said, but emergency responders from the Newark Fire Department were still at the parking garage fighting hot spots.

The fire did not cause any airport delays, Coleman said. The parking deck at Terminal C, which exclusively serves travelers flying on United Airlines, was closed.

— Brooklyn: A Five-Alarm Warehouse Fire

Temperatures were close to zero when firefighters got the call around 3:45 a.m. Thursday about a fire at a Brooklyn warehouse.

Given the weather, firefighters tried to fight the flames from inside the building, Fire Department officials said. But they were later pulled from the building for safety reasons, forcing them outside in the bitter cold.

Nearly 200 firefighters and emergency medical personnel responded to the blaze, the Fire Department said.

Buses were brought in to help keep firefighters warm, ABC 7 reported.

The fire was under control by 10:30 a.m. Photos posted on Twitter by the Fire Department showed icicles hanging off fire trucks and hydrants that were being used to get the fire under control.

The Fire Department said it anticipated that firefighters would remain at the site of the building for much of the day Thursday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.