Posted on 12/03/2016 1:06:12 PM PST by Pearls Before Swine
There is a massive nine-alarm fire blazing in Cambridge near Berkshire and York Streets.
Nine alarms are the most that can be called. Firefighters from communities well outside the area being called in. Cambridge police are asking that the public avoid the area.
Multiple buildings are on fire, including a church. At least one building has reportedly collapsed.
Fire companies from all corners are on-scene to assist, including from Boston, Newton, Waltham and Wakefield.
Don't know who lives there now, but almost any university neighborhood in America is likely to be, as someone else put it, "diverse," and probably somewhat gentrified.
Right! I should have added that.
Yes, that’s another source of some of these fires. There are no kitchens in many of these flats and the tenants choose to use a hotplate.
Is Massachusetts one of the drought stricken areas ?
It’s a structural fire the drought is irrelevant
Do construction workers work on Saturdays? Not around here.
MIT’s eastern end reaches to Kendall Square, but Inman square is a couple of miles away. Since the Cambridge/Boston area is well-served by mass transit, I don’t know where Muzzies cluster, although clearly they live throughout the area.
But, for events like this, density might not be a good predictor of local occurrence.
I also read that the fire started at a construction site. That doesn’t tell us much, but is where they will start their investigation to distinguish accident from arson (if you can believe what you are told afterward).
Drought? We had two days of extensive rain here in the NE and this is a city not a rural area of brush and dried grass. I have no idea what caused this fire but it’s the third suspicious fire within a week.
All of the above. We’ve had fire after fire this last year. It seems as though we’ve had one or more a week. When times are bad, some owners will burn the place down and take the insurance. Poor tenants may use space heaters, hot plates and candles. It’s cold here in winter.
A 34 year old article?
Nonsense.
.
It’s the history of Boston. Not much changes here. If anything, we’ve gone back to the past with regard to arson.
That one building is determined to burn.
Most of Boston and the surrounding small cities are full of substandard wood housing inhabited by students and immigrants. Most would never pass current codes. It always shocked me on our many visits how crummy the whole place was.
I know. I was responding to a someone who posted that it was due to 'drought'. And it sounds more like it was a constructual fire (construction site). And yes, I made that word up.
Ah, you too are from here. Where do you live?
No.
“Not much changes here. “
—
Are you kidding?
The Boston in which I grew up is gone forever.
.
.
Many construction sites used temporary heaters at this time of year. That would likely be propane space heaters, with a 4’ tall cylindrical propane tank as the fuel reservoir. If there’d be a leak, and the propane were to ignite, that would certainly set off a large fire. Several tanks stored as backups would only feed a fire. Just a theory.
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