robo-fire?

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Just got woken up by the robo-dialer call about a multi-alarm fire in Somerville... anyone have a locale on this? Gonna be hard to get back to sleep not knowing any details, what with having people I care about all throughout this city.

Wicked Local (ie Somerville Journal) has An alert has been sent out by the city of Somerville of a multiple-alarm fire now in progress.

More as we have it. Yeah. got that.

This is not very different from having someone call screaming "Oh My GOD!" then hanging up.


ETA: edmokeski added this handy link to Som. Fire Scanner in a comment in another post:
http://www.somervillelocal76.org/index.cfm?zone=/unionactive/view_page.cfm&page=Live20Scanner20Feed

5-alarm fire?

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I just got called by the city of Somerville automatic system (scaring the bejeezus out of me) to tell me that there is a 5-alarm fire happening...somewhere in Somerville. It told me that if I was required to, to call the city back (I assume 'required' are people like EMTs, volunteer firefighters, etc).

Anyone else get called? Know what's going on?

more about the fire -- report from the scene.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

i just took a walk up the hill to take a look at things[1], and figured i'd provide some hard facts.

the fire looks to have been centered on the house on the southeast corner of the walnut/highland intersection here. the damage seem to be limited to that house and the houses directly adjacent.

the cataldo folks tell me there were no injuries. there was nobody home at the time of the fire in the house that was hardest hit, which i'm sure helps with that.

so, hooray for no injuries.

[1] not actually just rubbernecking! i know folks who live in that general area and wanted to be sure they were okay and didn't need a place to go.

Connect CTY System Fire Call Error

[somerville311.livejournal.com]

Please note that the Connect CTY fire alarm call that went out this morning at approximately 3:45 a.m. was designed to provide a standard notification to the City's emergency responders ONLY.  Through human error, the call was mistakenly sent to the entire city.

The City of Somerville and its Fire Department sincerely apologize for this error, which will not recur.

We hope that, despite this error, you will continue to remain on the Connect CTY distribution list for urgent messages about snow emergencies and other time-sensitive topics directly relevant to you and your neighborhood.

If, however, you choose to remove your contact information from our database, you may do so by calling 311 from any phone in Somerville during normal business hours (617-666-3311 from outside the city) and we will promptly delete your household from the system.

For those of you who may be curious about the actual incident, please note that this was a three-alarm blaze that appears to have started in a storage shed/garage between two residential structures on Walnut Street (Numbers 79 and 81). 81 Walnut appears to have been unoccupied while restoration and construction work was under way.   Six people were made homeless by the damage to the multi-dwelling building at 79 Walnut.  The fire was brought under control quickly and is under standard investigation.
 
Per standard protocol, the Red Cross has been called to the scene to assist the victims with shelter and other support.  No injuries to residents or to firefighters were reported. 

Once again, please allow 311 to offer a sincere apology on behalf of the City and its Fire Department to all those who recceived this call..

175!

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

At about 7:45, I was voter #175 at the TAB polling place. The line was down to the end of the parking lot.

Free stuff when you vote

[nomacmac.livejournal.com]

Not that you need another reason to vote, but I know everyone loves free stuff. Has anyone heard of any other offers?

Free cup of coffee at Starbucks today if you tell them you voted.

Free ice cream at participating Ben & Jerry's from 5-8pm today.

These are both on the company websites, although I didn't check to see what local Ben & Jerry's are participating.

Voting lines in Davis

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

I voted at the Methodist church on Chapel Street, Ward 6-3. There was a line but it was moving quickly - I arrived at 8:10, left at 8:24. How are the lines elsewhere?

Vote on BOTH SIDES of the paper!

[turil.livejournal.com]

I only just now realized that I didn't see the ballot questions on my ballot. For some reason, they must be on the back of the paper.

I wonder how many other people didn't vote on the questions because they didn't see them on the ballot...

Remember to turn it over!

After waiting over an hour in line, my brain must have turned to mush. I feel ripped off, just slightly, since I really cared about some of those questions, and I spent that hour waiting, and only got to vote for half of the stuff!

Oh well.

But you'll remember to look on the back of the paper, right? :-)

Best Results-Watching Bar

[mermaidcafe.livejournal.com]

Is there a bar that will likely be showing election returns, and maybe even the Stewart/Colbert coverage?

I'm sure most bars with tv's will be showing returns, but I'm not doing so well at even remembering which ones have tv's.

If it's not right in Davis, that's fine.

November meetup

[anomie666.livejournal.com]

If you saw the previous post, please disregard.

In a weird turn of events, we do now have a date set for the November meetup. I just got a call from Rudy's cafe and we are going to have our next meetup there on the 17th @ 7pm.

They can't seat us if we are not ordering dinner, and those who are going to order food can definitely grab a table. However, if it is dead that night, he said he would allow us to grab tables. So right now, the plan is to meet at the bar section of Rudy's at 7pm. I'll send out a poll a week ahead of time.

Election Day Problems?

[progressnerd.livejournal.com]

I figure you might enjoy a thread for your Election Day problems and oddities. I'll start with one of mine: Why exactly are poll workers instructing voters to remove their ballots entirely from the privacy sleeves before feeding them into the optical scan machines? The point of the privacy sleeve is to ensure your vote isn't bought or coerced, so removing it where it's in plain view entirely defeats the purpose. If you're going to ask us to remove it, might as well not give us one at all. I disobeyed the instruction and fed in my ballot directly from the sleeve, without a hitch as usual. I've tried calling the Elections Department to ask about this bizarre practice, but not surprisingly, I just get a busy signal.

Any problems you found?