Careless smoker starts two-alarm fire in JP senior-citizen apartment building
A two-alarm fire on the seventh floor of the Forbes Building, 545 Centre St., reported around 1 p.m. forced the evacuation of residents today.
The fire was reported knocked down around 1:30 p.m.
The Boston Fire Department reports:
Fire Investigators have determined cause was careless disposal of smoking material. Chief estimates loss at $100,000.00.
Several residents in eighth-floor apartments were trapped by the heavy smoke; firefighters reached them and used fans and open windows to dissipate the smoke.
The MBTA was asked to send over buses for the residents until they could either return to their apartments or new housing could be found for them.
At least one sixth-floor resident refused to evacuate, however.
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Comments
Unbelievable
The 39 bus from FH to Copley Sq. (many people who would normally take the orange line would take this bus as a substitution) goes right by this complex on Centre St, which is narrow and difficult to navigate on a good day. I'm told traffic on Centre came to almost a standstill. And fire hydrants were frozen and there was nowhere for fire trucks to park.
Three people are now homeless
Three people are now homeless, but yes, too bad about traffic.
amazing
Its amazing that smoking is not prohibited in this building --So dangerous for residents
It might be prohibited
That doesn't mean that someone who has been going outside for a long time didn't decide that "nobody will even notice if ..."
It is amazing that there are
It is amazing that there are people who still think smoking is a good idea. I hope this person was arrested and evicted.
Kick those old people out!
Yes, let's arrest and evict senior citizens, that'l teach 'em.
I hope someone suggest that smoking cessation might be conducive to having an apartment in the future. Actually, since it sounds like the apartment is unlivable I guess they probably did get evicted. Oh well.
May not have been a resident
The smoker may have been a guest. I've known elders who are in public housing who invite friends over (who sometimes stay overnight) when it is very cold, because they save heat that way.
carelss smoker causes fire
There are any number of ways a tenant can start a fire without smoking. A candle left too close to a curtain, a frying pan full of bacon forgotten on the stove. Cigarettes are allegedly "fire-safe" now, designed to go out at short intervals, but combined with alcohol or absent-mindedness, nothing combustible is 100% safe in an apartment building. If there were no "smoking materials" in the world there would still be a lot of fires caused by negligence. The best way to save lives and property in an apartment would be to have fire extinguishers on every floor and a building constructed to be fire-resistant. Maybe there should be separate housing for people who smoke or don't mind smoking, just to make everyone more comfortable. But events like this are used by the political establishment and spun bt the news media to further promote the idea that smoking is an unmitigated threat to all of us, rather than just another vice, and that it must not be tolerated anywhere. I think more and more of us are realizing that the issue is not as simple as that.
Do you know what you're talking about?
Granted, I'm not rushing headlong into fire scenes, but I've never heard of BFD lying about the cause of a particular fire.
If they say somebody burned their house down by plugging three heat lamps into a power strip, I believe them. And if the Boston Fire Department says a fire started because of "careless disposal of smoking material," yeah, I'm going to believe them before some anonymous commenter with a smoking problem.
He Makes a Good Point
The poster was not saying the cause is being misrepresented as part of an agenda. But rather the responses of posters who say things akin to "Smoking should be illegal" is. That there are numerous ways fires can start and it seems like posters are making those statements not because smoking is a fire hazard but rather as part of the general campaign to eliminate smoking. If the fire had started by one of the other common methods you wouldn't see people on here saying "Ban cooking!" or "Ban electricity!".
sigh
Exactly! Think of all the cigarettes that are responsibly smoked and extinguished by adults, resulting in no fires. But a handful of unfortunate headlines/incidents a year resulting from a "careless smoker" gives all people who enjoy cigarettes a bad name, and also distorts the perception of danger.
People cook to eat. People
People cook to eat. People use electricity to heat their homes, and power lights so that they can see in the dark. People don't smoke to live. Got it?
In Massacchusetts in 2013
In Massacchusetts in 2013 smoking was 19 %, tied with electrical 19 %, behind cooking 22 %, as the cause of residential structure fire deaths. It's unreasonable to ask people to eliminate electricity or cooking but not at all unreasonable to ban smoking. I definitely would never allow smoking of any kind on any property I owned.
"careless disposal of smoking
"careless disposal of smoking material,"
Depends on what they are smoking. Many different things are smoked.
"the anonymous commentor with a smoking problem"
My name appears right before my comment--it's Paul Neff--and I was responding to other comments which connected this awful event to the Ban Smoking Everywhere movement, now endorsed by our government and others. I didn't make it clear enough that I was not questioning the reporting, I was suggesting we put the blame on carelessness rather than on smoking (as is done wherever possible these days)--that there'd be fires even if "smoking materials' were completely banned, and that it would make more sense to be prepared for fires than to ban smoking for everyone. No problem with the article. I don't understand how you can adduce from someone's opinion on the issue of smoking prohibition that they have a 'smoking problem", though.
Heat of the moment, for which I apologize
However, I've yet to see any proof that the Boston Fire Department is lying or is lazy about determining the cause of fires, while my own experience is that they are neither and are willing to admit when they don't know the cause of a fire, rather than just pulling "careless disposal of smoking material" out of thin air.
Smoking-related fire not
Fire officials often blame fires on the "careless disposal of smoking-related materials" when the actual cause is difficult to determine.
"[D ]o you simply list all of your "undetermined" fires as "careless smoking" so you and your crew can get back to dinner, bed, or back to the station to make shift change?"
Captain Scott McClain, investigator, Norfolk [VA] Fire-Rescue.
http://www.firehouse.com/topic/leadership-and-command/keeping-yourself-o...
For a variety of reasons, including the adoption of "fire-safe" cigarette laws, smoking related fires are at all-time lows.
[S]moking fires have been on a downward trend since 1995...The dramatic decline in smoking fire deaths is one of the principle reasons for the record low number of fire deaths in 2005.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tr_36SP9A1Dj8-qrN5c9RtMMwc-Sq2WdD1be...
This isn't Norfolk, VA
Give me some proof this is happening in Boston. Over the past few years, whenever I have contacted BFD to ask about the cause of a fire, if they don't know, they refreshingly say "we don't know," not "smoking."