A four-alarm fire engulfed a luxury apartment building near the intersection of Route 1 and Route 128 in Peabody this afternoon. No injuries were reported, but all the buildings in the surrounding complex were ordered evacuated for the night, displacing 900 to 1,000 people, fire officials said.
About 1,000 people were evacuated from about 400 homes in Sierra Madre as a wildfire continued to burn out of control this morning.This is pretty serious news, yet it isn't even frontpage in the Globe.
The fire, which began Saturday at about 3 p.m., consumed about 400 acres of steep mountainous terrain north of the city, including some areas that have not burned in more than 40 years, Sierra Madre Fire Department Battalion Chief Michael Bamberger said this morning. "This is not a lazy fire," he said. "This fire is burning with some energy."
Bamberger said he was waiting for the possibility of more evacuations, although he added, "It looks like we're making good progress tying off the southern end of the fire," near the city's northern boundary, which is where more homes are located. No homes had been burned, he said. - Los Angeles Times
WAKEFIELD — “The Fire Department budget as submitted for FY 2009 is not sufficient to properly operate the Fire Department,” Fire Chief David L. Parr advised the Board of Selectmen at a special budget meeting Saturday morning at Town Hall.
“If the budget cannot be supplemented with additional funding,” Parr further noted in his budget summary, “we will be forced to reduce the number of firefighters on-duty from 10 to seven, reduce the number of fire engines available to respond from three to two and close the Greenwood Fire Station. The Contractual Services, Materials and Supplies, and Sundry budgets have all been level-funded since 2007 and are not keeping pace with the sharp increases in operating the department, particularly in the cost of fuel, supplies and repairs.”
The $90,000 (2.7 percent) cut reflects an across-the-board effort to decrease all town departments' operating budgets in anticipation of an overall fiscal deficit in the vicinity of $1 million for FY’09.
An e-mail requested a follow-up to this post. I looked for "Lord Wakefield" in Google News and found this on the Wakefield Observer's site.
Wakefield - Jay E. Valade, 50, of Stoneham was pronounced dead at the scene inside his Ford F-150 truck in the early morning hours of Jan. 16 after police and firefighters received a call reporting that the truck was on fire in the parking lot of the Lord Wakefield Hotel.
LAWRENCE – A fire in an abandoned nightclub early this morning erupted into an inferno that spread to at least 15 buildings in a dense neighborhood of homes and businesses.
No deaths or serious injuries have been reported, but the blaze tore through part of a city block and burned with such ferocity that the flames could literally be heard roaring. White smoke could be seen rising for at least 10 miles.
As many as 380 people were evacuated, said Lawrence Mayor Michael J. Sullivan. He said the included both those left homeless and people from neighboring homes whose power had been cut as a precaution. Twenty-six apartments were destroyed or damaged by the blaze, authorities said.
The fire near the corner of Market and Parker streets was first reported at 2:30 a.m., not far from the Lawrence commuter rail station. It appears to have begun in the Millennium nightclub, which was under renovation.
"The fact that the fire began in a vacant building does raise red flags for us," said State Fire Marshal Stephen D. Coan. "We are treating this as a suspicious fire."
The nightclub had utilities and the walls were bare, which allowed the flames to spread quickly, Coan said.
The fire has been contained but burned so hot through the morning that steel building frames turned white. Just before midday, ladder trucks were still pouring water down on smoldering triple deckers and orange flames continued to leap from the crater that had once been a building.
The structures that burned included 26 apartments in at least 10 residential buildings and two businesses, fire officials said. Lawrence Police Chief John Romero said one person was treated for minor smoke inhalation. By early afternoon, 54 people were at the Red Cross crisis center in a Lawrence school, most of them expected to stay the night. Red Cross officials estimated that another 100 people lost their homes but planned to stay with family or friends.
WAKEFIELD — The body of an unknown person was found in a pickup truck at 2:07 a.m. today after police and firefighters received a call of a vehicle on fire in the parking lot at the Lord Wakefield Hotel on North Avenue.
Police said that upon arrival, they found the Ford F-150 fully engulfed in flames.
The victim has not been identified at this time since the body was burned beyond recognition, police said, and the cause of death is currently unknown.
A three-alarm fire at a triple-decker on Blue Hill Avenue in Boston has injured at least 13 people, Boston fire and emergency service officials said.
