South End roof catches fire

By adamg - 3/27/12 - 4:10 pm

South End fire, from 101 Huntington Ave. Photo by Dan Gross.

Firefighters responded to 33 Union Park around 4 p.m. for a roof fire, which they quickly knocked down, but not before it poured thick black smoke into the air. Fire investigators are now trying to determine the cause; the Boston Fire Department estimated damage at $200,000, said there were no injuries.

Union Park, of course, quickly filled with firetrucks. Photo by Marija Strazdas.

Comments

Fascinating ... and a note of caution

By JohnAKeith - 3/27/12 - 7:42 pm

#1

Wow. Scary photo although it looks as though it turned out to be far less serious than it could have been. Maybe the roof material was tar & burned off the smoke?

Funny that I could be sitting two streets away and not notice a thing except a couple trucks going by.

The other scary thing is that fire engines have to navigate such narrow streets as there are in the South End (and North End). Remember several years ago when there was that fire in South Boston and the fire engines couldn't get down the street because of cars in the way (although there I think it was that cars were double-parked).

The downtown neighborhoods are so dense and the houses (obviously) attached, so if anything happens in one, it could quickly spread to other buildings.

(In the Back Bay, townhouses originally had little protection between them, but following the 1872 fire, the code changed. You can see several buildings with "fire walls" between them - the brick barriers you see jutting up between buildings.)