No lives were lost in the huge fire that gutted a storage building on the Brooklyn waterfront over the weekend . But the flames put plenty of lives on display as the crumpling warehouse belched up its contents : decades ’ worth of charred medical records , court transcripts , lawyers ’ letters , sonograms , bank checks and more . “ They ’re like treasure maps , but with people ’s personal information all over them , ” Spencer Bergen , 24 , said of the half - charred scraps that he said he had seen strewn around the Williamsburg neighborhood as far inland as Berry Street , several blocks from the warehouse . ;