A fire in an off-campus house on Ossipee Rd. destroyed much of the top floor of the building on Aug. 15 and forced its Tufts tenants from their home.
The Ossipee Rd. fire was one of three blazes within the past month that have destroyed homes in the area surrounding Tufts and increased local awareness of fire hazards and the need for vigilance.
According to an official from the Somerville Fire Department's (SFD) administrative office, the cause of the fire is still under investigation, but The Somerville Journal reported that an unattended candle on the third floor most likely started the blaze.
No one was hurt aside from the household cat, Amber, who perished in the flames.
The three recent fires near campus - the Ossipee Rd. conflagration, and fires on North St. and the corner of Willow and Foskett Streets that did not involve Tufts students - have demonstrated a need for increased fire prevention. Crews on the scenes told the Journal that both the North St. and Willow St. fires were thought to have been caused by improper flammable chemical use and could possibly have been prevented through increased city inspections for potential fire hazards.
The legal context of the Ossipee Rd. fire contrasts greatly with the 2003 fire on Harris Rd. that killed junior Wendy Carman, however. Both fires were caused accidentally - an unattended cigarette was the cause of the 2003 fire - but Carman was living in an illegal apartment carved out of a space above a garage, which had no proper entry or exit.
Carman's landlord, Frederick Shaffer, was an "absentee landlord"- he did not live in or near the buildings he owned. Shaffer was found to have violated a number of building code regulations by creating and renting the apartment. He paid $53,000 in a settlement with the City of Medford.
The home on Ossipee Rd. is owned by a local man, Gaetano Fodera. The Somerville Assessor's Database shows that Fodera lives in Somerville, and a phone directory business listing shows a Gaetano Fodera as the owner of G & C Construction, a Somerville firm, suggesting that he is no "absentee landlord." He could not be reached for comment.
In the wake of the fatal 2003 fire at Harris Rd., Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn and then-Somerville Mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay announced an initiative that would require city inspectors to check all rented properties for code violations every time that the tenants change.
The initiative met resistance from the Massachusetts Rental Housing Association (MRHA) and from officials who were afraid that the increased number of inspections would be impossible without hiring more building inspectors at a greater cost to the cities.
A Somerville inspectional services employee, who declined
to give his name, said that inspections between tenants are "usually not enforced" because "the sheer volume [of inspections] would be impossible." The complexity of inspections is heightened by the number of housing units in the area. Somerville is one of the densest towns in the United States, with almost 20,000 people per square mile, while Medford has just under 7,000 per square mile.
Though the administrative office of the SFD would not comment on the fire investigation until its completion, there have been no reports of a probe into the landlord's liability.
Even though all fires are not preventable via city intervention, there is hope that increased awareness of fire prevention through door-to-door inspections and investigation of complaints of fire hazards will bring down the number of fires in Medford and Somerville. Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone has since assembled a special group of inspectors who investigate resident complaints of fire hazards.
The Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) helped all displaced tenants of the Ossipee house find new accommodations. "We're all back on campus," junior Rebecca Firesheets said.
