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2017 Cohoes fire

structure fire in New York, United States

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ48741589
Source-derived summary

The 2017 Cohoes fire was a non-fatality fire that destroyed three residential buildings and affected 28 others in Cohoes, New York. Damage was estimated to be at least $4 million. The fire started on November 30, 2017 when a local resident, John Gomes, attempted to imitate a metalworking technique from the History Channel series Forged in Fire. Flames from a burn-barrel he was using were spread by wind to adjacent structures.

Gomes was charged with counts of felony arson and reckless endangerment, and released after posting bail. Around 28 people, including Gomes, were displaced. No deaths were reported. There were minor injuries, including a firefighter who was taken to a hospital. Gomes pleaded guilty to arson and in June 2018, he was sentenced to one year in jail and a $600,000 fine.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2017 Cohoes fire” is structure fire in New York, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cohoes, fire and structure, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2017, 2018—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Cohoes, fire and structure is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “structure fire in New York, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48741589. Authority coordinates are 42.770, -73.701. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017 and 2018.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “2017 Cohoes fire”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 2017 Cohoes fire primary sources, 2017 Cohoes fire archive and Cohoes research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “2017 Cohoes fire”?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from 2017 Cohoes fire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.