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Seven-alarm fire rips through Somerville triple deckers
By adamg on Thu, 07/25/2013 - 8:21am
Fire from a couple blocks away. Photo by Flooie.
Firefighters from Somerville and surrounding cities are on Calvin Street, where at least four buildings are on fire this morning.
The smoke can be seen and smelled for miles around.
More photos:
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
WTF
Why is Somerville always on fire?
No trailer park
If Somerville had a trailer park, then it would draw tornadoes instead.
Check it out on Google Maps
This particular street is a solid mass of wood-frame, balloon construction, likely tar-paper-under-wood-shingles triple deckers. Some are eave-to-eave, others may have as much as 10' separating them.
Can you tell that these areas of Boston were built when wood from Maine was cheap and firefighting had advanced sufficiently to keep firestorms from happening? There are reasons that Chicago's "two flats" and "three flats" are all masonry.
Somerville is the Chelsea of
Somerville is the Chelsea of the 2000s
Huh...
I totally smelled something burning this morning riding though Chestnut Hill and JP. Could it have been this or was something else on fire too?
Probably this
People were smelling it all over.
oddly enough, i live a 5
oddly enough, i live a 5 minute walk away and didn't smell anything burning.
Lucky
No one was killed or injured.
Shouldn't you say "rips right through", like the local television stations? Their goal seems to be to add the word "right" as often as they can in the newscast.
Thanks.
I tell my girlfriend that I'm not the only one annoyed by this.
Quite a view from the Tobin
There was a huge trail of smoke as seen from the Tobin at about 7:00am. I immediately went to Twitter where @nefirebuff was already on the case.
My E Line trolley reeked of smoke, which I'm guessing drifted in while it was sitting at Lechmere.
Firetrucks from as far as Winthrop are (were?) on scene.
Inversion conditions
Smoke goes up, hits clouds, bounces back down a few miles away.
Calvin
Back in 1999 I lived in one of the buildings that burned today. One poster mentioned that the buildings are really close, and that is 100% true. When I lived there, I could hear people leaving messages on answering machines (days before voicemail) in the neighboring buildings. You could hear toasters pop up and microwaves beeping. So it's no surprise that one fire in one building creates 5 more. Plus the streets are super narrow.