Meadowbrook tenants, fire department at odds over fire response

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CAROL LOLLIS

Northampton firefighters back off from the building after they put a hole in the roof while battling the April 13 fire.

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GORDON DANIELS

This is the foundation of Building 21 at Meadowbrook Apartments on Bridge Road, which is expected to be rebuilt next year.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Miguel Candelaria Jr., center, with his wife, Chrystal, and daughter, Aaliyah, 10, who lost their home in the Meadowbrook Apartments fire, stand in front of their new home on Spring Street, where they moved with help from the community after being displaced in the fire. With them are Owen G. Mohan and Lisa Snook-Mohan, left, and Miguel's parents, Miguel Candelaria, Sr. and Candy Candelaria.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Northampton firefighters battle a blaze at Meadowbrook Apartments, building 21, on Bridge Road April 13. Months later, tenants are raising questions over the response.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Amy Dugal, comforts Derek Campbell of Greenfield, as building 21 at Meadowbrook Apartments, where his parents, John and Lisa Campbell, lived, burns.

NORTHAMPTON - It's been seven months since fire destroyed the homes of 22 Meadowbrook Apartments residents. For some, anger over the event smolders.

Tuesday, four fire victims and former city councilor Mike Kirby voiced their grievances with the Northampton Fire Department and Meadowbrook management in a meeting of the City Council's Committee on Public Safety that also drew about a dozen members of the Fire Department.

The session was, at times, tense as tenants complained and firefighters shot back with testimony of their own. Fire chiefs from Granby and Easthampton, a professor of fire sciences, turned out to praise the Fire Department's response to the blaze.

Nobody was hurt in the April 13 fire at the housing complex at 491 Bridge Road in Florence.

The four city councilors who make up the Public Safety Committee listened and asked questions as both sides sounded off, but ultimately said they found no fault with the Fire Department.

Instead, they pledged to engage residents and management at Meadowbrook in discussions about increasing fire safety at the complex.

Even so, Fire Chief Brian Duggan said members of his department have grown accustomed in recent years to a degree of suspicion from the community beyond Meadowbrook, because of misconceptions they reacted slowly and ineffectively to fires at Meadowbrook and elsewhere.

"You get continual negative reinforcement and criticism," Duggan said. "That takes a toll."

GazetteNET's raw video from the Meadowbrook blaze

Other videos:
--Another video from the day of the fire
--GazetteNET's video report on the fire's aftermath one month later
--A WWLP-TV report on the fallout from the Meadowbrook blaze

One member of the department told the committee and audience he takes the criticism personally.

"I find it offensive that you attack the integrity of our rank and file," said Capt. Jon Davine.

Former Meadowbrook tenants Tanja Nutt, Leslea Duggan and Deborah Bowler all called for an official investigation of the Fire Department and in particular Duggan, saying they questioned his competence.

The chief himself suggested that an independent study of the Meadowbrook fire response would lay to rest perceptions his department mishandled the incident.

But the Public Safety Committee voted unanimously not to pursue any study, saying it wasn't necessary. "If I had a fire at my house I'd think, 'Why'd they do this, why'd they do that?' But I'm not a professional firefighter," said committee member Robert Reckman.

Committee Chairwoman Maureen Carney also called for the panel to draft a "statement of confidence" in the Fire Department. Reckman and the committee's other two members, City Councilors David Murphy and David Narkewicz, voted in favor of the measure.

Tenants views are split

Meanwhile, at the apartment complex Friday morning two Meadowbrook residents interviewed offered differing viewpoints on the fire and the actions of the fire department.

Kimberly Rivera, who moved three years ago from building 21 to a townhouse apartment nearby, had a front-row seat to the fire.

"They took way too long to put the fire out," Rivera said. "It could have been taken care of way before it got to the point that it was."

Tara Mullen, who lives across the street from building 21, said she called 911 when she spotted the flames and yelled for people to get out of the building.

"It was a real bad fire," she said. "I mean, in the blink of an eye it was up in flames ... I wouldn't blame it on the firefighters. They came pretty quickly."

Electrical issues

Although the state fire marshal's office concluded the fire was caused by "careless disposal of smoking materials" - specifically, a cigarette butt dropped in a trash can - some of the tenants who spoke Tuesday said they believe the fire could have had an electrical origin.

In any case, they said, building 21 was riddled with electrical problems before it was destroyed.

Nutt, who lost all her possessions and her cat in the blaze, described her smoke alarm going off whenever she turned on her bathroom light. She said problems like this were never properly addressed by management.

"Maybe some people believe it's OK to allow low standards for low-income housing, but I do not," she said.

Nutt said smoking should be banned at the complex, and called for mandatory fire drills and fire extinguisher training for tenants.

No one from Preservation of Affordable Housing was present at Tuesday's committee meeting. The company's asset manager, Alexa Dailey, said in a phone interview she'd heard of only one electrical problem at Meadowbrook. In September, the agency temporarily relocated tenants of building 1 after an electrical malfunction was discovered there.

"Nothing's been brought to our attention," Dailey said. But, she added, "I'd be happy to talk with folks."

Preservation of Affordable Housing plans to put up a new building 21 sometime next summer or fall. Thursday the company presented plans for the new structure to the Zoning Board.

Dailey and Northampton Building Commissioner Anthony Patillo said the new building 21 - unlike the other units at Meadowbrook, which were built in 1971 - will meet present-day building codes, including those that require handicapped accessibility and sprinklers for fire suppression.

But it's beyond the city's authority, Patillo said, to force upgrades in existing Meadowbrook buildings, which do not have sprinklers.

Response revisited

Kirby, who lives on Summer Street, was not directly affected by the fire. But in the ensuing months, the Fire Department's approach to the fire at Meadowbrook - and another that destroyed a single-family home on Shepherd's Hollow Road in Leeds in 2008 - have been the subject of lengthy entries on his blog, kirbyontheloose.blogspot.com. Kirby has questioned the Fire Department's actions as well as the construction of building 21, which he believes allowed the fire to spread quickly.

Tuesday, Kirby played for the committee a video of the fire available on YouTube. The video shows flames chew through an upper corner of the structure and spread around the roof before firefighters begin to spray water on it. "If I lived in Meadowbrook, I'd find it hard to sleep at night," Kirby said, saying the danger exists for similar fast-moving fires in any of the complex's 28 remaining buildings.

Kirby and former residents expressed dismay that the Fire Department's didn't immediately battle the fire with hoses from outside the building.

Nutt described one woman who took matters into her own hands and began connecting lengths of fire hose while, she maintains, firefighters appeared to stand by idly. The firefighters told the woman to back off, Nutt said.

Leslea Duggan, a former Ashfield firefighter in whose apartment the fire is believed to have started, recalled shouting to the firefighters, "What are you waiting for, a pack of hot dogs?"

"They were probably overwhelmed because this was a real fire," she told the committee Tuesday, noting there are frequent false alarms at the complex.

The Fire Department responds to an average of 90 calls at Meadowbrook every year, according to Chief Duggan.

He said firefighters did not begin spraying water outside until after teams of firefighters finished searching for people in the building.

The first fire commander on the scene, Capt. David Gagne, was told there could be as many as five people trapped inside, Duggan said. Two hoses were used to spray water inside the building during the searches, Duggan said.

One Easthampton firefighter, Capt. Steven Kennedy, was injured during the final search by a falling piece of drywall, which was saturated by water from the hoses, said Easthampton Chief David Mottor.

"When we're looking for people in a building there's not a lot of firefighting going on," said Everett Pierce, a professor of fire sciences at Anna Maria College in Paxton, who spoke at Tuesday's meeting.

Kirby said a recording of radio communications from the incident seems to indicate firefighters encountered problems with fire hydrants at Meadowbrook. Nutt said she saw the water pressure drop while firefighters aimed their hoses at the building's exterior.

But Williamsburg Fire Chief Donald Lawton, who took the role of water manager during the incident, said there was never any shortage. Lawton said firefighters are heard on the dispatch recording calling for more water because they were using every available drop.

"It's real easy to sit back and watch a YouTube video," said Northampton Deputy Fire Chief Timothy McQueston. "When I'm standing there I don't have the luxury. I have to make a decision ... If we lose a building so I can keep my guys alive, so be it."

James F. Lowe can be reached at jlowe@gazettenet.com.