Canal Street Fire

by cgrotke | Police & Fire | 757 Views

Reports of explosion and big fire on Canal Street. Internet out for many. Firefighters on scene.

Comments | 13

  • Submitted by cgrotke on November 7, 2024 at 11:02 am

    The building

    Sportsman’s Lounge…

  • Submitted by Grumpy Old Nerd on November 7, 2024 at 3:48 pm

    I wonder if we'll ever know the cause

    That place was a festering den of junkies for a while.

    • Submitted by CCM Holland Mills on November 8, 2024 at 4:39 am

      they're investigating in good faith

      Later in the morning Canal Street was sealed off to traffic and much dust and cranes were employed. Apparently they needed to clear structure and debris to get access to critical points for the fire investigators.

      It seems clear there were several people sleeping in the basement who got out unscathed and unidentified. Perhaps the explosion was due to their negligence, perhaps not. I for one will not be quick to blame people desperately seeking sheltered sleep in November.

      GMP sent me an e-mail through nextdoor that there was a power outage affecting over 1000 customers; it came at about the time the fire was reported. A follow-up several hours later said all was good. I know many lost ISP service but didn’t see any lights out. Co-op had to take cash in the afternoon.

      The smoke managed to drift high over downtown for a few hours but dissipated completely by noon.

      • Submitted by Grumpy Old Nerd on November 8, 2024 at 5:27 pm

        > It seems clear there were several people sleeping in

        > It seems clear there were several people sleeping in the basement who got out unscathed and unidentified. Perhaps the explosion was due to their negligence, perhaps not. I for one will not be quick to blame people desperately seeking sheltered sleep in November.

        I wouldn’t either, but anyone who’s been on Canal St for 5 minutes in the last year knows that The Sportsmen’s wasn’t some Hooverville full of poor people down on their luck. It was a hovel where people went to use hard drugs, and predators went to sell drugs to those people. You’re far from the first person to conflate people who are homeless due to poverty and bad luck and addicts and predatory gangbanger dealers who cannot exist in a society without harming themselves and those around them.

        It’s amazing – but not surprising! – that a traphouse like that was tolerated and allowed to operate out in the open for as long as it did. That’s something none of us should accept. But the dominant ideology is that it’s much better to let addicts kill themselves slowly while harming others around them, and for predatory gangbangers to post up in our town to cruelly exploit those people, than to do anything even the slightest bit coercive to separate the junkies and the dealers from the rest of us.

        There was a drug house operating for years across from the playground at Crowell park, next to the Green St elementary school. Years and years of police calls never changed a thing, the deals were happening out in the open, on the sidewalk even. The only thing that stopped it was when the place burned down. Whether the fire was set by some junkie or vigilante, or it was a freak accident, good riddance to the The Sportsmen’s.

  • Submitted by annikee on November 8, 2024 at 8:28 am

    Offline for a Day

    Comcast went out at 5:20 a.m. out here in West B. I have my phone via Con Comm, so I had a phone while many of my neighbors were without anything- cable, phone & internet as a package deal. Throughout the day, Comcast AI kept moving the repair time until at 5p it said, “Tomorrow, by 9p.m.” I gave up caring at that point and dug out my old Jensen disc player. It’s all back this morning, but it was a good day offline. I’ll do it more often.

    • Submitted by cgrotke on November 8, 2024 at 8:49 am

      A mess all over..

      WVEW was out. Lots of stores were closed or cash only.

      Hannaford had a power outage early in the morning that lasted hours. They were cash-only AND all the freezers and refrigerators were either roped off or empty. No frozen goods, milk, eggs, cheese, meats, fish, prepared cold foods, or vegetables for a while. Poor staff had to run around and secure everything, then run around and open it all back up. They don’t have generators for the food, just the “essential operations”. Heh. One would think groceries were essential to a grocery store. Nope.

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