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.

[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.

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.