He Said, She Said

The accidental Sunday fire, caused by careless disposal of a cigarette,  killed two; the next day Gregory Levey purposely immolated himself in town center using two gallons of turpentine

The 911 call came in early Sunday morning at 6:21 a.m. while most of Amherst was still fast asleep.  Smoke was billowing from the roof of a large two family dwelling on North Pleasant Street on the northern outskirts of town center, the kind of report -- called a "box alarm" -- that gets the undivided attention of emergency dispatch, who then instantly radios APD and AFD.

 284 North Pleasant Street

Despite the desperate attempts of first responders to quell the flames,  two students died from smoke inhalation.  The house was divided into two apartment units, each with six occupants, a violation of Amherst's zoning ordinance limiting unrelated tenants to only four.

Additionally the attic, where the deaths occurred, had been turned into bedrooms without a second means of egress, a clear violation of building safety codes.   

That was February 17, 1991.  Fast forward to September 19, 2012: A fire starts in an (illegal) basement bedroom apartment at #28 Gilreath Manor on Hobart Lane, quite possibly due to an overloaded electrical circuit.  Fortunately the blaze starts near high noon rather than late at night, so it is quickly extinguished by AFD.

 Gilreath Manor, Hobart Lane, Amherst

The basements are not zoned as a sleeping space, do not have an approved second means of escape and some lacked working smoke detectors.

Later that day town authorities receive an email and phone calls from residents concerned that building owner Grandonico Properties systematically wants students to hide evidence of illegal basement bedrooms from town inspectors.

Town officials keep the matter quiet (this is after all Amherst, where even the H is silent), but managed to get Grandonico to make basic safety upgrades to all the units. 

But now Grandonico Properties is fighting an official order from Building Commissioner Rob Morra to cease and desist renting to more than four unrelated tenants, a violation of town zoning bylaw.  The owners response mimics the three monkeys:   see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

In other words, it's all the students' fault.  Grandonico only allows four tenants to sign the lease, therefore they cannot be legally held responsible if more than that occupy the space.

Interestingly, however, their lease states:  "Any payment not received from a Lessee shall only be accepted, if at all, on behalf of the Lessees and shall not constitute any relationship or tenancy with said party."  In other words, we will take the money but the look the other way from who may be contributing to the final amount.

In an official response to the Building Commissioner's order, Grandonico Properties, LLC is taking the matter to the Zoning Board of Appeals on December 20 ... Unfortunately when UMass is on break, thus making it unlikely students will come testify about what they were told by the owners when first signing a lease.

Even more interesting, the owners are trying to force the "legal" residents to sign a statement "under the pains and penalties of perjury" that they are the only occupants authorized to live in said premises. 

Since Building Commissioner Morra has yet to actually issue a fine to Grandonico Properties, it's unclear what legal standing can be created by the Zoning Board of Appeals, as only Amherst Town Meeting can modify or change the four unrelated tenants bylaw.  And an appeal of a monetary fine would go before a judge in District Court.

The permits acquired when the basement egress windows were installed were for an occupied space to be used as a study or entertainment room not a bedroom.  Thus the owners may not find the Zoning Board overly sympathetic to their cause. 

Either way, Grandonico Properties should have realized they got off easy.  What if that blaze on September 19, 2012 had been a replay of the tragic 2/19/91 fire?  They would now be facing jail time.

Obviously somebody has failed to learn from history.

Every Parent's Nightmare

Buses wait for their precious cargo at Crocker Farm School

Details are sketchy at the moment but we do know that an Amherst Middle School child was struck by a vehicle upon exiting a school bus near the Fort River School on South East Street at approximately 2:47 pm Friday.

Amherst police and fire personnel swiftly made the scene and the child was taken to Bay State Medical in Springfield as opposed to Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton (usually indicating serious injury, but in this case simply precautionary).

Amherst School Superintendent Maria Geryk sent me this statement early Friday evening.

MassLive reports 

#####

UPDATE (Saturday 7:15 pm)

I had forgotten that I broke the story three-and-a-half years ago about the DA finding no criminal negligence with the bus driver in that stunningly sad story of a child dying under the wheels of an Amherst school bus.  Although that horrific scenario flashed through my mind instantly yesterday when I first heard dispatch vectoring emergency personnel to S. E. Street for what was originally reported as a bus hitting a child.

I Hear The Train A Comin'

 Now with the new line markings, folks traveling Main Street will also better see that they are approaching a railroad crossing

The Irish, mainly, built the railroad spur cutting through Amherst just below the Dickinson Homestead circa 1850, and the first train chugged over them in June, 1853.

Around the time of construction, a youthful Emily Dickinson wrote to her brother requesting he return to Amherst to kill some of the Irish as they were "so many now, there is no room for the Americans."

Of course Miss Emily got over her disdain for the Irish.  In her last will and testament she specifically requested six hard-working Irish laborers who tended to the Homestead, carry her white casket out the back door, across a field, to West Cemetery.

Unlike her father Edward, who had the proverbial bring-the-town-to-a-complete-halt kind of fancy funeral with a grand procession through town center.

Kelley Square, as it is still called on the assessor's map, is located only 75 yards southwest of this Main Street railroad crossing.  My great, great grandfather Tom Kelley purchased the property from Edward Dickinson in 1864 for $1,216. 

Edward had purchased it from the railroad five years earlier for only $100, so not a bad Return On Investment.

At its peak Kelley Square hosted three houses, fruit trees, roses, grapes and a barn.  Maggie Mahar, Miss Emily's loyal servant, protector and friend ... the "North Wind" of the family, retired to Kelley Square after the final Dickinson died, where she lived out her days.   Called back, finally, in 1924.

The last remaining house on Kelley Square was demolished in the 1970s and the land returned to the wild.

The trains, however, still chug through Amherst.

Merciless

USS Arizona 12/7/41

USS Arizona today

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (12/7/41)


“With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.” (12/8/41)
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Total killed at Pearl Harbor 2,402

Attack begins:  7:48 a.m.

USS Arizona explodes: 8:10 a.m.

USS Arizona:  1,177 killed in action, the highest loss of live in US naval history. 

By Any Other Name

 Amherst Bulletin: above the fold, front page headline

Journalism and justice share a common goal:  both seek "to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."  And oftentimes it's not pretty.  Or as jaded cops would say, "It is what it is."

Today's weekly Amherst Bulletin is an embarrassment to anyone who holds high that sacred tenet of journalism still taught in J-schools (I know because I was just in a classroom two days ago) to seek the truth and report it.

On Friday November 29, the Daily Hampshire Gazette belatedly reported the November 19th death of 19-year-old UMass student Sydne Jacoby from injuries sustained in a fall on Fearing Street the late night of November 16, after becoming sick from, according to a best friend's Facebook post, "a high level of intoxication." The next day that Gazette story is sent out over the Associated Press national wire.

Well they sort of reported it, leaving out her name -- the very first W in the oldest journalism formula in the sacred reporter's notebook:  Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. 

And now that I'm thinking about it, they also obscured the "How". 

On Thursday November 28 -- a day before the Gazette story -- the LI Herald published a prominent article about the sad untimely death of Ms Jacoby, publishing her full name, but leaving out the detail about alcohol. 

On December 2 my story is published, and the following day the Massachusetts Daily Collegian follows up with a banner front page headline containing her name, and briefly mentioning the alcohol connection -- but only using the attribution of AFD Chief Tim Nelson from the Gazette article (where he had been specifically assured the young woman's name would not appear).

But today's Amherst Bulletin story, buried on page 5, is unchanged from last week's original Gazette article.  And the reason for leaving out her name is still the same excuse that UMass spokesperson Ed Blaguszewski refused to release her name.  Even though her name had appeared in a variety of published sources.

The front page, impossible-to-miss lead Bulletin story is, however, a direct byproduct of the this exceedingly sad episode:  "More College Women Treated For Drunkenness."  Amazingly they fail to connect the dots to this most blatant deadly example from just two weeks ago.

Yes, the family did not want her name released -- but then, no family ever wants anything remotely negative to be associated with a deceased loved one.  If we start allowing a family to edit a story then we are no longer reporters, we are PR flacks. 

Ten years ago a horrific fire at the Station Nightclub in Rhode Island claimed 100 lives, the 4th worst fire catastrophe in our nation's history.  What if every relative told the media not to release the name of their loved one, or the fact they died in a bar?

What if we had 100 different media outlets simply reporting one local person died recently, but left out their name and the fact they died alongside 99 other people in a bar with substandard safety protocols?

As a direct result of that devastating fire (and the resulting avalanche of news publicity), Massachusetts passed safety legislation requiring sprinklers and "crowd managers" in bars with a capacity of 100 or more.

By shining a bright light on unsafe conditions -- especially ones that have led to a tragic outcome -- public officials are far more likely to actually do something about it. 

We need to get a handle on the abuse of alcohol in our quaint little college town.  Now!

Delayed Due To Alcohol

AFD ambulance. The quicker the response, the better 

If you -- my Amherst neighbor -- or a loved one required immediate aid last weekend in the form of highly-trained first responders riding aboard a well-equipped Amherst Fire Department ambulance, you quite possibly would have had to wait, upwards of double or triple the normal response time, for a "mutual aid" ambulance to arrive from a surrounding community.

No, it was not a mass casualty plane crash or train wreck that caused all of our ambulances to be engaged.  It was drunk college aged youth -- eight of them at UMass, four at Amherst College (all women), and another four off campus.

And yes, one ETOH UMass female also had to be treated for "trauma" from a fall, only two weeks after another UMass female student died from head trauma after a late-night, after-party fall.

This is unacceptable ... embarrassing ... and downright scary.

    AFD 1st Weekend December     

What a difference a week makes!  When our three institutes of higher education were closed for Thanksgiving break.

AFD Thanksgiving Weekend

Cutting Dangerous Corners

 45 Phillips Street

So you have to feel bad for the current owners of Bruno's Pizza who, through no fault of their own, suddenly had to shell out big bucks to safely deal with the three old gas storage tanks with old gas still remaining,  unexpectedly uncovered during the Main Street reconstruction project.

Since the conversion from gas station to food service happened in the 1970s the previous owner -- Bruno Matarazzo -- probably had no idea those tanks were there as well.

But the recent oil tank problem at 45 Phillips Street is another matter altogether.  When you pack more than the four unrelated tenants allowed by law into a one family wood frame unit -- especially a demographic that likes to party -- an extra amount of wear and tear should be expected.

And since Mr. Gharabegian's property card for 45 Phillips shows not a single permit pulled for any improvements since he purchased the mansion back in 2007, obviously he's not the neater half of The Odd Couple

While on cite doing a follow up investigation at the problem house, Amherst Fire Department Assistant Chief Don McKay noticed an oil stain in the basement and a hole in the floor that looked as though oil had drained down it, and a brand new oil storage tank, installed without a permit.

Apparently the original 275 gallon tank was damaged during a basement party.  

In addition to the the $400 in fines levied against Mr. Gharabegian for all the various infractions related to the dangerous practice of fly-by-night installation of a potentially explosive product, the Department of Environmental Protection is also investigating whether 45 Phillips will become Amherst's Love Canal. 

45 Phillips

Have a nice day Mr. Gharabegian.