Boston Residents Reflect on Fire Safety as Fire Incidents Increase

 

When Brianna Balsamo had experienced a gas leak in her Allston apartment, she was not sure if it would be appropriate to call the fire department. After experiencing tensions with her landlord regarding other safety concerns in the apartment complex she currently lives in, Balsamo had feared being issued with additional and unnecessary fines or charges. Balsamo eventually made the decision to contact the fire department, and was told that she should have called sooner; the gas leak could have posed further dangers to Balsamo’s life as well as others that live in the building. Balsamo is not alone in her experience regarding fire safety. As fire incidents have become more common in Boston and its various neighborhoods, many residents do not know how to respond properly. 

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​According to the Fire Incident Reporting dataset from Analyze Boston, the year of 2022 has reported 54,089 fire incidents. As the same dataset from Analyze Boston can show different fire incidents, trends and patterns have shown that the same Boston neighborhoods, by zip code, will often be more likely to experience more fire incidents. 

 

When it comes to including the case of a fire incident, incidents can range from complete building fires to chimney fires to trash or rubbish fires. 

 

Fire incidents prove to be more complicated than expected – they can contribute to repetitive city patterns and display resource disparities between differing Boston communities and neighborhoods. This, in turn, can affect property losses and damages in certain neighborhoods and can lead to lack of development in infrastructure within varying neighborhoods. These correlating concepts can contribute to an increase in fire incidents, leaving some neighborhoods and residents with little to no resources. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In 2022, Boston itself had reported a total of 14,958 fire incidents within the year, followed by the neighborhood of Dorchester with the second-largest number of fire incidents of 9,063. The neighborhood of Roxbury followed closely after, reporting 8,594 incidents. Along with having high numbers of fire incidents, Dorchester alone has a total of nine fire stations. The neighborhood of Roxbury has five fire stations. 

 

The phenomenon of having large numbers of fire stations in smaller neighborhoods is not unusual. As Dorchester and Roxbury have continuously suffered from high rates of fire incidents and property damages and losses, both neighborhoods have had little resources to stop trends of common fire incidents, despite being the neighborhoods with the largest number of fire stations in the entirety of the city. 

 

As Boston remains a historical city, many of the city’s buildings lack contemporary or updated fire safety precautions which can help residents proceed with caution. Residents of buildings have also found it difficult to recall fire safety education as well as if the places they live in will help in the case of an emergency. 

 

Living in Allston, Brianna Balsamo has faced troubles in properly reporting and acting on fire incidents. It is likely that Balsamo’s building could face more risks, especially as Allston had followed Roxbury’s count on fire incidents. Allston has reported 4,244 fire incidents in the last year. 

 

As a 23-year-old living with two other roommates in Allston, Balsamo had expressed concerns regarding her safety. 

 

“I’m on the third floor of my building, so I get nervous about what I’d have to do if I needed to leave,” Balsamo said, “And I’m already working two jobs and sometimes struggling to pay rent, especially as a postgraduate student. I don’t know what I’d do sometimes if I got hit with a fine from my landlord.” 

 

Other college students living in Allston have also faced similar situations. Evonne Johnson, a current Emerson College senior student, however, has felt that she feels safe in regards to fire safety. “I think it’s safe because it’s [apartment in her building] has fire alarms in every room,” Johnson said. Despite this, like Balsamo, Johnson also fears for her financial concerns. “I think that’s pretty sad since college students are probably more at risk of not being able to pay off the damages caused from the fires,” Johnson said. 

 

Balsamo was also not the only postgraduate student living in a Boston apartment building to have experienced a gas leak. After living in her Back Bay apartment for three months with her other two roommates, 23-year-old Alexis King had experienced a gas leak. 

 

King had reported that she had started to feel a headache along with her roommates. The three of them had already known that their gas stove had issues in the past, noticing the knobs falling off and experiencing difficulty turning off the gas after cooking. By this point, the windows in the apartment had completely fogged up and none of the residents had been able to smell the gas any longer after ingesting it for a two-hour period. 

 

In response, King first tried to call the apartment’s maintenance line, but no one answered the line. After no response, King and her roommates decided to ask the security guard of the apartment building downstairs, only he did not know what to do either. Finally, King and her roommates had decided to call 911. 

“ Once we brought the firefighters to our unit they unplugged the stove and pulled it out from the alcove it was in. At this point a maintenance worker had come to our unit and was being reprimanded by the fire department explaining how this was a huge safety hazard and that our fire alarms were also severely out of date,” King said. 

 

After the incident, King and her roommates attempted to apply more caution towards fire safety in their apartment building. “The fire fighters had explained to us to open all the windows in our apartment and to not light a candle or anything flame related for a minimum of 48 hours,” said King, “For the rest of the night I started to feel nauseous and had an awful migraine. My roommate and I were too scared to fall asleep so we stayed up most of the night with our symptoms.”

 

Students have mostly all agreed that they know very little about fire safety for the spaces that they live in, and this can apply to all neighborhoods that students end up living in. Ryan Leclerc, a junior student attending Emerson College, had also additionally experienced a gas leak in his North End apartment. 

 

“We decided to go out onto our fire escape while my roommate and I waited for our landlord to respond to us, but we instead got a fine for using our fire escape when we were told we were not supposed to,” said Leclerc, “but I don’t know. It seemed like a good enough reason to go out onto the fire escape for an emergency, but I guess the management of the building thought otherwise. To be honest, I don’t even know where the nearest fire extinguisher on our floor is.” 

 

There are also students who are nervous in regards to what they will have to do for fire safety in the future. Sofia Attaway, an Emerson College junior student, originally from Texas, is unsure of her future of living off-campus in an apartment in Boston. “I guess I have all the normal thoughts - like obviously don’t leave candles lit and to be safe now that I’m going to be cooking. I haven’t had access to a kitchen before, so it’s definitely something to keep in mind. I don’t know if it’s electric or it’s gas,” said Attaway, “I guess my ignorance is exactly my problem in keeping myself and my apartment fire safe.”

 

King, also a native Texan, had felt that she had little education when it comes to fire safety. “If I’m being honest, I have very little knowledge of fire safety. I learned the stop drop and roll in school as a kid, how to evacuate a school bus, and in my own home back in Texas my dad gave me a ladder that you throw out the window since I was the only room upstairs,” said King. “I think fire safety when living in a new apartment isn’t really talked about. In my complex we only have one fire extinguisher for all six units and it's located on the floor below mine.”

 

If there is one thing that more students are aware of, though, it is that lower-income neighborhoods, such as Dorchester and Roxbury, are more likely to suffer from increasing fire incidents. “In lower income neighborhoods, I’m not shocked. I’m sure that many students that live in those apartments in those neighborhoods are not up to date, and yet they are completely overpriced,” said Attaway, “And these are communities that are in desperate need of housing.” 

 

Both Roxbury and Dorchester continue to show trends of not only suffering from a consistent increase of fire incidents, but a tremendous amount of property loss as well. In spite of this, Dorchester continues to be the neighborhood with the largest number of fire stations in the entirety of Boston. 

 

As more Bostonians, especially younger residents, continue their searches for places to live, knowledge and education on fire safety has proven to be quite limited. As displayed in many opinions of students, things such as economic status and wealth can additionally impact where someone might live. This can ultimately lead to living in a space or neighborhood which suffers from increases in fire incidents as well as living in a space which provides little resources to combat fire incidents and overall safety.

 

In the grander scheme of what fire incidents can affect, it has become clear that most people might often worry more about the consequences, financial or other, that they might face in the occasion of a fire incident rather than simply worrying about the cost of a life.