Thursday, May 24, 2012
The Seekonk Board of Selectmen discusses the potential purchase of the Maple Avenue property during a closed-door session.
The Maple Avenue building that was destroyed in a Seekonk fire earlier this month could become town property. The Board of Selectmen met about the value and a potential purchase of the site during a Wednesday night executive session, which is not open to the public. Also on the agenda for the executive session was "litigation strategy regarding potential litigation concerning public safety issues related to the recent mill fire." The fire sparked at the former dye factory on May 1 at approximately 4:30 a.m. It took nearly two days and the assistance of several nearby fire departments to put out the blaze, which destroyed the two-story building. Nobody was injured or killed in the incident. The cause of the fire is under investigation, …
Thursday, May 3, 2012
A company representative will attend the next Board of Selectmen meeting to speak about the gas leak during this week's fire in Seekonk.
A spokeswoman from Columbia Gas says the company is cooperating with state investigators on a probe of this week's Seekonk gas leak that occurred during a fire in an abandoned mill that was not supposed to have any functioning utilities. "We've been talking with the Department of Public Utilities," Columbia spokeswoman Sheila Doiron told Attleboro-Seekonk Patch on Thursday. "We're already in full contact with them." She said Columbia's policy is not to speak to the media about a specific incident once an investigation has begun. The Seekonk Board of Selectmen requested the investigation at the Wednesday night meeting. Selectman Gary Sagar, a retired fire captain, said it was a miracle the gas leak did not kill anybody. An excavator …
Seekonk officials say it is a miracle nobody was killed when an active gas main was ruptured in the Maple Avenue fire.
Seekonk selectmen are demanding to know why a gas main was active at the condemned mill on Maple Avenue that burned down this week when all utilities were supposed to have been shut off three years ago. The main was ruptured during the effort to put out the fire on Tuesday, causing a dangerous gas leak that lasted nearly three hours. Selectman Gary Sagar, who is a retired Attleboro fire captain, requested at the board meeting on Wednesday for a state investigation of the gas main issue. He said he was part of the team that determined the mill should be condemned three years ago, and that Bay State Gas (now Columbia Gas) said at the time that gas service had been shut off. "It is an absolute miracle that we are not sitting here planning …
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Minimal contamination was found in Initial testing of the water and air in the area of the fire on Maple Avenue, Fire Chief Alan Jack says.
The Maple Avenue mill fire in Seekonk was fully put out at approximately 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Seekonk Fire Capt. Michael Healey told the Board of Selectmen at the meeting that night. Local, state and federal investigators are looking into the cause of the fire that sparked at approximately 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday and engulfed the 105,000-square-foot building. The building was destroyed, Fire Chief Alan Jack told the media at a press conference early Wednesday afternoon. "Someone started this fire," Jack said. "We're not saying it was an arson fire. What we are saying is it didn't start by itself. Someone caused this fire to start. Whether or not it was ... somebody with an intention to burn this building or whether or not it was an …
Carol Bragg
11:58 pm on Friday, May 25, 2012
See if you can open this. It's the December 2008 Omni Environmental Report on 36 Maple Ave. http://public.dep.state.ma.us/fileviewer/Default.aspx?formdataid=0&documentid=32320 more ›