Belleville (NJ) Fire Seen From Red Hook (Brooklyn)

I walked around Red Hook, Brooklyn, with a friend on the afternoon of May 3, 2026. Our walk took us to Red Hook’s Valentino Pier, which has what may be Brooklyn’s best view of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. My friend, who is known in these pages for having rescued a stuffed bird in Williamsburg in the summer of 2025, noticed something peculiar to the northwest of the Statue of Liberty, way off in the distance in New Jersey: An ominous cloud of black smoke. See my photograph from 3:59 PM: The Statue of Liberty can be seen on the left. Smoke from the fire in Belleville, New Jersey, is seen on the right. Later on our walk, she searched for news about what we were seeing across the river and found that a fire had started in a mattress factory and spread quickly. I had no doubt that this must have been a big fire based on what we could see from Brooklyn, and the smoke still appeared thick when she pulled up the news story i approximately one hour after I took my photo. I learned…