State Fire Marshal Urges Springing Safely into Summer
Please take a look at this informative article, where the author warns about the use of Grills on fire escapes “Grills should never be used indoors or on fire escapes.” A violation of obstructing your fire escape.
Residents Evacuated After Partial Building Collapse In South End
January 1, 2020 at 11:36 pmFiled Under:Boston News, South End News
BOSTON (CBS) – Part of a building collapsed on Upton Street in the South End Wednesday night.
The rear fire escapes and part of the 5-story brick building fell, according to Boston Fire.
Photos show large holes in the back of the building and a pile of debris in the alley.
A Tech-Rescue response for 5 story brick at 23 Upton St. This is a un occupied posted building. The rear fire escapes and part of the building has come down pic.twitter.com/xPRf5n7QtM
— Boston Fire Dept. (@BostonFire) January 2, 2020
Boston Fire said the building that collapsed was unoccupied at the time.
Five residents from adjacent buildings have been evacuated. No injuries have been reported.
2 People Escape As Fire Tears Through Seekonk Home
SEEKONK (CBS) — Firefighters rushed to rescue the people and pets inside a multi-family home as a blaze ripped through it Tuesday morning.
The fire began around 9:40 a.m. in a three-story home on Hull Street.
Several people were displaced and one cat died after a fire tore through a house in Seekonk Tuesday morning. (WBZ-TV)
Two people were inside at the time, but were able to escape the flames.
One told WBZ-TV’s Mike LaCrosse that he used a fire escape to get out safely.
“It was all pretty much just like a quick instinct, ‘I need to get out of here,’” said resident Malcolm Jones.
Fire officials said they rescued six dogs from the home, but unfortunately one cat died.
None of the residents or responding firefighters were hurt, but 4-6 people were displaced. The Red Cross was assisting them.
Crews were still on the scene at noon to put out hot spots.
The cause of the fire was not yet known.
Essex police & fire band steps up for fallen comrades
Di Ionno
Instructor Mike Glackin checks Joe Brogan’s drones as George Hemmer looks on during practice for the Essex County Police and Fire Emerald Society Pipes and Drums at The Shillelagh Club in West Orange on May 9, 2016. (Alexandra Pais | For NJ Advance Media)
Alexandra Pais | For NJ Advance Media
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By Mark Di Ionno | The Star-Ledger
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on May 11, 2016 at 8:27 AM, updated May 11, 2016 at 11:58 AM
The names are never forgotten. Neither are the dates nor the places where local police and firefighters lost their lives.
They are a part of every story, inherent in the legacy and history of the Essex County Emerald Society Police and Fire Pipes and Drums band.
This incarnation of the 35-year-old band began with the death of Newark firefighter Harry Halpin, who died in a fall from a fire escape collapse on Aug. 16, 1980.
“The fire department had to hire a civilian pipe band,” said John Hermann, the Montclair fire chief and a snare drummer in the band. “The guys back then decided to start their own band.”
There had been a Newark Emerald Society band in 1950s and ’60s, but it no longer exists. After Halpin’s funeral, the uniformed officers and firefighters of Essex County vowed they would never again bury one of their own without the pipes and drum honors played by their own.
MORE: Recent Mark Di Ionno columns
“No cop or fireman should be buried without it,” said Jack McGarry, a retired detective sergeant from the East Orange Police Department who is a piper in the band .
In those early days, they were the only pipe and drum band in New Jersey.
“We did every police and firefighter funeral in the state,” said Ed McNany, the band’s drum sergeant (lead snare drummer) who joined in 1982.
They went to Camden County for the funerals of John McLaughlin, an investigator in the prosecutor’s office, and John Norcross, a Haddon Heights police officer, ambushed as they tried to serve a warrant in 1995. They were in Cape May County a year earlier for Lower Township Ptl. David C. Douglass, killed as he chased a burglary suspect.
They did New Jersey state trooper line-of-duty funerals – Carlos Negron, ambushed on the turnpike in 1984; Albert J. Mallen, shot during a drug raid in Westville in 1985 – until the state police formed its own band in 1986.
The names aren’t forgotten. Talking to the band members before their weekly practice at the Shillelagh Club in West Orange is a linear lesson in the grim reality of police deaths. Not only are the names remembered, but the dates and the circumstances.
“We did 47 funerals, all together. Thirty-seven were P.A. cops.” — Bill Connolly, retired Newark police detective
It is a job the band members take seriously. The practices are two hours, with songs repeated over and over, until no pipe sounds flat or trails behind. It is a band of brothers, literally, and sons.
Ed McNany’s brother, Michael, a retired Springfield police lieutenant, plays the bass drum.
The other bass drum is played by Brendan Sim, a Belleville police officer and son of Scott Sim, the band’s lead piper. Hermann’s son, Chris, followed him into the Montclair fire department and into the band as a snare drummer.
This weekend, the band will take center stage during several “Police Week” events in Washington, D.C., leading up to the National Peace Officers Memorial Day on Sunday.
As the host band, they will play during the candlelight vigil for fallen officer on Friday night on the National Mall.
A lone piper for the band will stay for the midnight lowering of the flag to half-staff and again, at midnight Saturday, for the flag-raising.
On Saturday, they will lead a parade of about 40 Emerald Society pipe bands from around the country, including the New Jersey State Police corps for the National Emerald Society wreath laying.
On Sunday, they will be the featured band at the memorial service, where the 136 families of police killed in the line of duty last year are honored.
“We were there in 2002 (after the terror attacks of Sept. 11) when President Bush came down and shook hands with every one of them,” said Scott Sim, a retired Belleville police captain who is the band’s pipe major.
One of the songs the band will play is “Drummers Lost,” written by Sim after the World Trade Center collapse killed three Port Authority police officer who were drummers in that agency’s pipe band.
“Richie Rodriquez, Steve Huczko and Liam Callahan,” Sim said, without hesitation. “The building came down right on them.”
With the Port Authority band crippled by the loss of members, the Essex County band stepped in and did the funerals.
“We did 47 funerals, all together,” said Bill Connolly, a recently retired Newark police lieutenant who will receive a national valor award this weekend for apprehending an armed robbery suspect who shot at him. “Thirty-seven were P.A. cops.”
Connolly was working midnights then.
“A lot of us didn’t sleep. You’d get off work and go right to the funerals,” he said.
Jim Snellen, a West Orange fire captain, said the band plays the funerals “on their own time.” With 52 members, including the color guard – all of whom are either retired or active law enforcement officers or firefighters – they can always muster a respectable number.
“They either take vacation time, or swap shifts,” Snellen said. “It’s important we show up.”
Sim said as few as a dozen pipers and seven drummers will shake the nave of a church during the band’s thunderous rendition of “Amazing Grace” that will bring tears to the eyes to most at a police or firefighter line-of-duty funeral.
“It’s very emotional music,” he said. “We’re all from the same fraternity.”
As led the practice this week, he was wearing a black T-shirt in remembrance of Michael Morgan, a Newark gang squad detective killed in 2011.
“That’s what it’s all about,” Snellen said. “St. Patrick’s Day, the other parades are nice, but this is what it’s all about.”
Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.
Housing inspectors sweep through student enclaves
Buildings checked for code violations
DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF
Inspectional Services chief William Christopher and spokeswoman Lisa Timberlake examined a dwelling on Chester Street in Allston where inspectors found more than 30 violations on Sunday.
By Milton J. Valencia and Jan Ransom GLOBE STAFF
Students have begun arriving in Boston’s college neighborhoods, and so have the inspectors in orange vests.
About 50 inspectors with the city’s Inspectional Services Department joined transportation, code enforcement, public works, and neighborhood development workers Sunday, in an annual public ritual of inspecting apartments during the city’s biggest moving week of the year.
During one stop at 74 Chester St. in Allston, city employees were concerned that too many tenants were crowding into the dwelling. Les Christos, a 30-year-housing inspector constable, began to check the windows, and their locks, and noticed a broken sash cord. A stain in the ceiling. Then he noticed there was no stove.
The tenants told him they haven’t had one for two months, and that the building manager had told them cooking is overrated.
“This is pretty bad,” Christos said of the conditions. “You don’t have a stove, you got some water leaks, the kitchen fan is all greasy . . . that can cause a fire.”
The goal of the annual blitz, city officials said, is for inspectors to interact with new students and residents and offer services, to make sure the moving-in process is smooth and trash-free, and that housing — particularly off-campus housing for students — is safe and up to code.
The inspectors also publicized the city’s new 311 program, which allows residents to call the number 311 or download a related app to report any city violations.
“The message is going to be one of cooperation and support, to make sure the students who come in here have a good experience,” said William “Buddy” Christopher, commissioner of Boston’s Inspectional Services Department, who joined his staff on inspections Sunday.
But some are skeptical of the mass inspections, which typically occur at the start of each school year and can appear more symbolic than strategic. The critics say more inspections — and citations of properties that violate city rules — are needed.
DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF
City housing inspectors found more than 30 violations at one building on Chester Street in Allston.
Such oversight has taken on new importance following concerns that students were living in dilapidated units. A Boston Globe Spotlight investigation in 2014 found that the city’s college neighborhoods were riddled with dangerously overcrowded units that went unnoticed, leading to public safety problems. Landlords, meanwhile, had ignored violations so that they could continue to collect rent with little investment.
The Spotlight report centered in large part on the death of Binland Lee, a 22-year-old Boston University student who was killed in a fire in 2013 after getting trapped in her attic bedroom, in an apartment in Allston that had insufficient exits and a faulty fire alarm system.
City officials, responding to the newspaper’s report, identified 589 properties that appeared to be in violation of a city zoning amendment that prohibits more than four full-time undergraduates from sharing an apartment, but critics said the city has still failed to do more to penalize landowners.
Kevin Carragee, co-president of the Hobart Park Neighborhood Association, moved into his Brighton neighborhood in 1989, and he said the city needs a year-round, proactive strategy to ensure safe and quality housing for students, and also for long-term residents who call these neighborhoods home.
“This is a fall ritual,” he said, “But I think the question for people in Allston and Brighton where a lot of residents live is whether a systematic approach to substandard housing can be taken.”
Christopher said that he spoke with Mayor Martin J. Walsh on Sunday, and that the mayor has been monitoring the inspection process. He said that the city has increasingly engaged students and landlords in the last year, and that both have been receptive.
He said students are told to call housing inspectors when they have problems, because “as soon as we get involved, things get done quickly.”
Christopher said one critical message to students has been that “we don’t throw students out because landlords aren’t taking care of their property.” But, he said, the purpose is to have landlords resolve code violations.
At times, that can depend on tenants. Another inspector at the house on Chester Street found that two bedrooms in the basement blocked exits and had the wrong size windows. The inspector also had concerns about the fire escape, which lacked an up-to-date inspection certificate. There were at least a dozen rat burrows in the backyard, and the basement of the dwelling smelled of cat urine.
The tenants received a violation for not keeping the place clean. There were liquor bottles and other trash around the house. They started cleaning immediately.
DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF
Housing inspectors said rats burrowed into this building on Chester Street in Allston.
David Hsu, 24, moved into the house last year. He said he knew there were some issues with the house but didn’t realize it was so bad.
As he stood in his bedroom doorway and spoke to a reporter Sunday, the ceiling above him began to leak and form a puddle. During the winter, there was no heat for three weeks, he said.
“We try to get in contact with property managers there and they’re slow to respond,” Hsu said. “They’d say they’ll come to fix it but no one would show up. A lot of people just gave up.”
The owner of the property is Michael Polacco, who has a history of building code violations, according to city records.
Polacco could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Alp Kantar, property manager with Boston Property Management, said that the company inspected the place two weeks ago, and that he told the tenants to clean the place.
“It’s kind of embarrassing,” he said in a phone interview. “This is the first time I’m facing this.”
Kantar said he did not know about the leaks in the house or the roughly one dozen rat burrows in the backyard, but he was thankful the city brought those and other issues to his attention.
“I wish they would do this more often, not just the day before Sept. 1, that way property managers can be more active about it. We’re not perfect,” Kantar said.
Christopher also said the property owner, though he did not identify Polacco, will be cited beginning Monday for at least 30 violations at the property.
Milton J. Valencia can be reached at mvalencia@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MiltonValencia. Jan Ransom can be reachedf atjan.ransom@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jan_Ransom.
Blaze that kills 2 Boston firefighters
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BOSTON —D & J Ironworks failed to follow safety precautions, which officials said led to a massive fire in the Back Bay that killed two firefighters in March. That’s the finding of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Watch the report | Photos: Memorial for firefighters killed in Back bay blaze
The nine-alarm fire on March 26 started because the Malden-based welding company allowed its employees to install railings using arc welding equipment during high wind conditions, the investigation showed.
Fire officials said sparks from the welding at 296 Beacon St. ignited clapboards on an adjacent shed at 298 Beacon St., which led to the fire. Fire Lt. Ed Walsh and firefighter Michael Kennedy were killed.
“OSHA found that the company lacked an effective fire prevention and protection program, failed to train its employees in fire safety, did not have a fire watch present and did not move the railing to another location where the welding could be performed safely,” said Brenda Gordon, OSHA’s area director for Boston and southeastern Massachusetts. “This company’s failure to implement these required, common-sense safeguards put its own employees at risk and resulted in a needless, tragic fire.”
The investigation also showed that D & J Ironworks failed to protect its employees against respiratory and chemical hazards associated with welding, cutting, drilling and painting operations.
OSHA cited D & J Ironworks for 10 serious violations of workplace safety standards.
D & J Ironworks, which faces $58,000 in fines, has 15 days from the time it receives its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA’s area director or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
After OSHA released its findings in connection with the fire, Kennedy’s mother, Kathy Crosby-Bell, released a statement saying she was looking forward to the results of the complete investigation.
“This morning I learned the outcome of OSHA’s investigation that caused the tragic fire on March 26 and loss of my son, Firefighter Michael Kennedy,” she said in a statement. “This is only one piece of the ongoing investigation and I look forward to the results of the complete investigation from the District Attorney’s office. Ultimately, I hope this reminds all Bostonians of the critical need to ensure the safety of our firefighters who put their lives on the line for each one of us every day.”
D & J Ironworks didn’t respond to requests from NewsCenter 5 for information, but their attorney said the OSHA report is without support both legally and factually. He said, construction tradesmen, especially welders, should take workplace safety into consideration as to avoid tragic accidents.
Expert Says Rotted Boston Fire Escapes Are ‘Landmines Ready To Explode’
BOSTON (CBS) — WBZ-TV has discovered troubling information about a recent fire escape collapse in the Fenway neighborhood. Two people were hurt when they fell to the ground.
The owner has not filed a required safety inspection certificate since at least the late 1980’s, according to city of Boston records. We asked a fire escape expert to take a look, and he said this could be just the tip of the iceberg.
It was just before midnight on Sunday when some of the gratings on a fire escape on the back of 47 Hemenway Street gave way.
Several people were on it. Two of them were hurt when they crashed to the ground.
“I see there’s a missing bracket, a single bracket that used to be tied into the rail, and it gave way. I believe that’s why pieces of the grating gave way,” said Cisco Meneses, the founder of the National Fire Escape Association.
We asked him to look at the aftermath of the collapse. You can see where the bracket he’s talking about used to be, and you can see the spot on the wall where it once was attached. He blames rust, caused by a lack of maintenance.
“The rust is what eats the steel. And I believe, based on what I can see right now, she’s rotted right at the building,” Meneses said.
Why wasn’t that caught? There’s no evidence that the fire escape was inspected and safety certified.
“Right now a lot of these fire escapes, if they’re not being properly inspected and repaired, what happens is, we have collapses like this,” Meneses said.
Building owners in Boston are required to have their fire escapes certified every five years, and file that certificate with the city.
But when we searched the database for Boston’s Inspectional Services Dept., we found no certificates on file at least since the late 1980’s, a violation a building inspector has now cited the owner for.
The inspector’s report orders the owner to: “Provide a fire escape and fire balcony affidavit forthwith.”
But that’s not all we found. Just a short walk down the alleyway, Meneses points out another fire escape with holes in the brick where support brackets are anchored.
“There’s three, four supports not even tied into the building anymore,” he said.
Meneses said it’s not uncommon for owners to skip inspections or for private inspectors to gloss over problems.
“Because a lot of people, they collect 200, 300 bucks for a piece of paper,” Meneses said. “Nobody’s checking, and so what happens is, these are landmines ready to explode.”
WBZ-TV News tried to contact the owner of the building where the fire escape collapsed for comment, but two voicemails and an email went unanswered.
Source: CBS Boston: Expert Says Rotted Boston Fire Escapes Are ‘Landmines Ready To Explode’ By Liam Martin
Filed Under: Boston Inspectional Services Department, Boston News, Cisco Meneses, Fenway Neighborhood, Fire Escape Collapse, National Fire Escape Association More from Liam Martin