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Smoker causes one-alarm North End fire
By adamg on Sat, 05/28/2011 - 2:33pm
The Boston Fire Department reports a careless smoker sparked a fire this afternoon on the roof deck of 16 Parmenter St. that spread inside the building.
The fire caused an estimated $250,000 in damage.
The fire was only a few blocks from where another smoker destroyed a waterfront law office through careless disposal of a cigarette earlier this month.
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Comments
Christ.....What's WRONG with these people?
Why do people who smoke have to be so careless and irresponsible? It's high time they grew up, became more considerate, and stopped causing undo hardship and heartache for other people.
Everytime I read or hear about a fire caused by a careless smoker, I'm reminded of the woman on our side of the building where I reside who fell asleep while smoking in bed, set her apartment on fire, and caused the smoke to start wafting up into the stairwell. Even though I live on the fourth floor and the woman who caused the fire lived on the first floor, we still had to get out of the building. There were two things that saved her life and everybody else's:
A) the guy who lived next door to the woman who'd fallen asleep while smoking smelled smoke and started pounding on the woman's door and yelling at her to get out.
B) Since it wasn't a windy night, the fire didn't have a chance to really spread
C) I'll also add that the fire department was extremely efficient and came over immediately and took care of things. Whew!
One classmate that I grew up going to school with, who'd taken to the bottle full time (he's an alcoholic), actually set his own house on fire (a house that he'd built with his own hands, yet), and didn't even remember whether it was caused by a cigarette or a space heater. My hunch is that he was probably in a state of drunkenness when he did this, and probably fell asleep smoking in bed.
Now, ordinarily, I could admire and respect somebody (guy or gal) who has built a house that they live in with their own hands, but in this case I can't, since the guy just threw it all away, if one gets the drift.
Ahhhhhh...how stupid people can and do get sometimes.
I'd hazard a guess that . . .
. . Alcohol consumption is involved in most fires "caused" by "careless disposal" of a cigarette.
Sometimes it's just stupidity...
I don't normally defend smokers, but smoking under the influence of alcohol isn't always the reason.
Consider the recent fire at the waterfront law office. According to news reports, worker(s) at one of the law firms had been enjoying a post-midnight smoke on an upper-floor deck overlooking the harbor. I can imagine that someone tossed a butt, thinking it would fall in the water; instead the wind caught the butt and blew it back toward the building, where it landed on a lower-level deck -- which is where the fire started.
In my neighborhood of Cambridge, in the past few years, we've had two major fires that resulted from smokers "putting out" their butts in potted plants on outside decks! (And a third incident that was caught before it became major.) Instead of extinguishing the butt, the dead plant materials in the potting soil started to smolder.
Smoking is hazardous, not just for the obvious reasons, but one doesn't have to be drunk to be stupid. Use an ashtray, not a potted plant.
Clear-minded stupidity or drunkeness, it's inexcusable, imo.
It's true that plenty of people who act so stupidly are not drunk, or whatever, but I also believe that drunkenness and stupidity do shade into one another when it comes to setting one's own house or apartment on fire while smoking.
Thanks, Miki
For that insight.