Three Alarm Fire, Appleton St, off Willow

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Woken by fire trucks at 2:30 in the morning. It's a three alarm fire on Appleton St. off Willow. Contained to the one house, plus a live wire down. From what I could glean from the scanner, everyone seems to have gotten out of the house, but some people were taken to the hospital.

Now (3:15am) at the one-hour mark, it's still an active fire, but fire command on site has declined help from an additional company, and are saying "condition the same, companies making progress."

At 3:20am calling for a "20-foot collapse zone around the building. Slate shingles coming off the room, eminent [immanent?] danger of the chimney collapsing."
(does that mean they evacuate the houses on either side, I would assume?)

From my house I can see that Willow is shut down, and the bike path, so expect a similar 4 block radius.

Comments

[unferth.livejournal.com]

I live on Appleton, a little further up towards Clifton/Liberty. The fire is at #8-10 Appleton, the middle house between Newberne and Willow on the south side of Appleton. Or at least that's the best address I can find with Google Street View.

They're still pumping water onto it as of 3:45 AM.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

The fire address is 11 Appleton (according to onsite fire command on the scanner).

At 4:02am they're calling it "substantially knocked down" and are starting to recall some of the fire companies.

[unferth.livejournal.com]

It was definitely on the even side of the street.

Around 4:20 I saw the fire department detaching a hose from a hydrant. I still saw steam or smoke rising from the house, but I assume they know what they're doing.

I also saw about five people sitting in a police bus - one of whom I recognized as a displaced resident who I'd spoken to briefly about an hour earlier.

There are a couple of media vans here now, it looks like channels 4 and 5, so presumably we'll get some details tomorrow.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Yeah, today's news is saying 8-10 Appleton. I wonder if it was a resident at 11 who called the FD, and that's how they ID'd the scene?

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you didn't have to evacuate.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

News had it on this morning (Channel 5). I didn't catch the address but I'm a couple houses away off of Foskett so we can see it through the windows. From the news, the house is burned out and uninhabitable. It's a 3 family. Several people escaped from 2nd floor windows so have minor injuries from doing so. No word on why the fire began.

[preraphaelite.livejournal.com]

On my morning commute, I smelled smoke/burning before I saw the burned-out house. The back side of it is totally charred to bits. Looks pretty awful. There were still police and fire and news people there as of around 9am today.

[keithn.livejournal.com]

I'm glad there were no serious injuries and I hope those impacted find housing immediately. The emergency personnel and equipment in Somerville and the surrounding communities are top notch and we're lucky to have them. It looks like the fire spread extremely quickly after it started and was quite intense and yet there were no serious injuries and the fire was contained to a single building.

I was woken up by what turned out to be a news helicopter at 5am, repeatedly flying over my apartment as it circled the scene of the fire. I fully support police and fire helicopters flying anywhere at any time in the interest of public safety, but I really do not think news helicopters should be circling over densely populated areas in the early morning in the interest of gawking at a fire for ratings. Not only did it wake me up, but it caused me to be unnecessarily concerned that perhaps a police helicopter was chasing someone suspected of a crime through my neighborhood. I really hope this doesn't happen again, but I'm not sure who has control of this kind of thing.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

I agree approximately 1000 percent about how something, Idk noise ordinances?, should apply to news helicopters gawking at a story after it happened. I don't actually trust laws to work that way, because anything that limits the press these days makes me nervous, but seriously the fuel, and noise, and anxiety from constant helicopters really sucks.

Speaking of .. it's after 12 noon now and my block is surrounded by helicopter sounds. How did you ID the ones that woke you up as news choppers? I want to know what I'm hearing now.

[keithn.livejournal.com]

I identified it by going on Twitter and searching for Somerville to see what was going on and finding this tweet with a timestamp that lines up with when I heard the loud helicopter: https://twitter.com/NVermaNBCBoston/status/824921260593405952

I don't know if there were any emergency services helicopters flying around last night in addition to this news helicopter, but if they were, they weren't the ones that woke me up.

Globe story + photo

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

The photo in the Boston Globe story (http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/27/seven-people-injured-somerville-fire/kEAdXvaqba9doy4hR0bj9J/story.html) shows just what a conflagration it was. So frightening that it could go up that quickly – total loss. Glad everyone got out safely. I was also awoken by the sirens – and then later by the news copters.

[fangirl715.livejournal.com]

There was a Channel 5 news truck out there as of 10 p.m. this evening--I spotted it while walking home from the Ball Sq. laundromat tonight. Somehow my confused mind thought Appleton was on the other side of Highland Ave., so I was shocked to see just how close it was to where I live (how the hell did I sleep through all the sirens/helicopters/etc.?). The house and everything in it is indeed a total loss; I hope the injured residents will be OK, and that everyone has a place to go and help picking up the pieces, since I'm guessing they've lost everything. Do they have any idea what might have started it?

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

From the Boston Globe:

Residents said the right half of the house was a triplex occupied by friends in a band that practiced in the basement. The left half contained a first-floor apartment, rented conventionally, and a four-bedroom duplex above it that rented by the room on Airbnb, multiple residents said.

Link: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/27/seven-people-injured-somerville-fire/kEAdXvaqba9doy4hR0bj9J/story.html?event=event12

If I read that correctly, it sounds like a boarding house, which generally isn't legal in Somerville, right? You can't just rent individuals rooms in a unit.