Friends of Refugees

A U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program Watchdog Group

Archive for the ‘apartment house fires’ Category

Fire sweeps through apartments housing Myanmar refugees in Albany, NY

Posted by Christopher Coen on April 17, 2012

At least five houses were damaged in a fire that sweep through an historic neighborhood in downtown near the capitol in Albany on Sunday. The building where the fire started was occupied by three Myanmar refugee families resettled by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany. An article at the Albany Times-Union explains:

ALBANY — First, neighbors heard screams. Then they saw the flames.

A wall of fire washed over half a block of Park Avenue in the Mansion neighborhood Sunday evening, drawing every firetruck in the capital city to try to contain a blaze that was roaring in three houses when crews arrived around 8 p.m.

At least five houses erected in the years after the Civil War were damaged, officials said late Sunday. And although half a city block was evacuated as smoke and steam spoiled the mild spring air, no firefighters or residents were injured, according to Mayor Jerry Jennings and Fire Chief Robert Forezzi.

It was too early, the men said, to know how many people were displaced…

…Michele O’Sullivan, 45, was sitting in her apartment at 56 Park Ave. when “we heard screams, then we heard fire, then we looked up and in seconds we saw the flames.” She and several other neighbors said the blaze started at 60 Park Ave., in the back of the top floor. Forezzi and Jennings said an investigation was ongoing and that any word on a cause was premature. That building is occupied by three families who are refugees from the southeast Asian nation of Burma, according to a volunteer for Catholic Charities who assists them. The volunteer declined to be named. Some recently arrived in the city, but others have been here at least two years, the volunteer said… Read more here

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Another apartment house fire, this time in Louisville

Posted by Christopher Coen on April 16, 2012

Slum lords are notorious for failing to address maintenance issues. One result of this is the danger of fire (and here) due to failure of landlords to keep up the premises. A Nepali refugee family found this out the hard way last Wednesday in Louisville. A note at the Catholic Charities Louisville website identifies one of the families displaced by the fire as refugees:

Catholic Charities (Louisville, KY) – The Hari Subedi refugee family of six, resettled by Catholic Charities about a year and half ago, was one of the families displaced in the Buechel Bank Road Apartment fire today. While they and other residents lost everything, there were no injuries due to the fire.

The Subedi family did not need emergency shelter and are currently living with another Nepali refugee family… Read more here

A tenant in the apartment where the fire started said she awoke to a pop and found a socket beside her daughter’s bed on fire. She claims she began telling her landlord of faulty sockets when she moved into her apartment two years ago. The landlord allegedly placed tape over sockets in the apartment’s kitchen and told her an electrician would repair them, yet an electrician never came to the apartment to inspect the sockets. An article at the Louisville Courier-Journal has more:

Officials are investigating a fire that destroyed a building and displaced eight families Wednesday afternoon at an apartment complex in the 2100 block of Buechel Bank Road…

…Chrishawna Johnson, who was asleep in the apartment where the fire started, said she believes the fire was caused by an electrical short.

“I heard a pop and I jumped up,” Johnson said. “When I came out of my room, my daughter’s bedroom was on fire. The socket beside her bed was on fire.”

Johnson said she began telling her landlord — whom she could not identify — of faulty sockets when she moved into her apartment two years ago. The landlord placed tape over sockets in the apartment’s kitchen and told Johnson an electrician would repair them, Johnson said.

An electrician never came to the apartment to inspect the sockets, Johnson said.

A message left at Willowbrook’s leasing office was not immediately returned Wednesday.

No sprinklers were present in the building, and no fire hydrants are on the property… Read more here

Posted in apartment house fires, Catholic Charities of Louisville Inc., housing, housing, substandard, Louisville, Nepali Bhutanese | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Smoke Detectors and Apartment House Fires

Posted by Christopher Coen on December 16, 2011

Last month I visited a recent refugee family arriving from Africa. I noticed that the smoke detector in their apartment had a red light – a dead battery. Although the US State Department supposedly requires resettlement agencies to make sure that each refugee case has a working smoke detector, that doesn’t always happen. The problem with this is that the low-income housing units that we resettle refugees into are also prone to apartment house fires, and the dead battery in the smoke alarm presents a danger. The most recent fire I’m aware of was a fire on Tuesday night that displaced a Bhutanese refugee family resettled to Lansing, Mich. A Lansing State Journal article details the case:

LANSING - Damber Magar and his family were at home Tuesday night, watching television, when they heard a knock on the door.

They were told their neighbor’s apartment was on fire, said Damber, 16, who went outside with his parents and older sister and saw smoke coming from the roof.

Fire broke out at about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Woodside Meadows town houses…said Eric Weber, Lansing fire spokesman.

Firefighters have been unable to determine a cause, Weber said. They ruled out intentional and mechanical causes, but were not able to rule out electrical items that plug into outlets.

It appears the fire started in a common room, Weber said. Of six units in the building, four are unable to be occupied due to fire, smoke or water damage…

…Damber said he and his family are Bhutanese refugees from Nepal and have lived in Lansing for one year… Read more here

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Is Christian service for Hindu Nepalis not proselytization?

Posted by Christopher Coen on August 23, 2011

An article in The Roanoke Times tells the case of a retired Southern
Baptist couple and the Nepali refugees they have assisted. It seems as if the couple have good hearts, and they have obviously been enormously helpful to the Nepali community. While claiming that they don’t proselytize (the act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion) the couple have begun Christian services for the Hindu Nepalis.

…By the time Diana and Jim Martin heard about the July 29 fire at Westover Manor apartments, the building was about to be condemned.

The morning after the fire, the Botetourt County couple stood in the Westover parking lot next to their matching minivans. They were surrounded, as they usually are, by a couple dozen Nepali refugees who live in the southwest Roanoke complex — including one family of four that was displaced by the fire…

…Before the Nepalis became their calling, the lifelong Southern Baptists knew nothing about ritual cremations or eating goat stew, the kind you chew carefully before spitting out the bones.

A retired social worker, Diana had never owned a passport or traveled outside the country — unless you count the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. She concedes that she still struggles to adapt to some of the customs, including Hindu funerals and ritual cremations: “They put chrysanthemums in the body’s mouth!”

But the couple sealed their commitment when they traded in their cars for minivans so they could haul refugees around to appointments and classes, to doctor visits and radiation treatments, and — in several cases, with four more soon to deliver — to the birth of a child. Their gas bill is $500 a month…

…They met the Nepalis three years before the fire, in the same Westover complex. New volunteers for Commonwealth Catholic Charities’ Refugee and Immigration Services, the Martins were assigned as mentors to an Iraqi woman and her two sons…

…On a recent afternoon, Diana’s list is several items long and growing by the minute: drop off eye medication for a man with allergies, buy $97 worth of groceries for a woman whose food stamp card had been deactivated, deliver her standard birthday gift of four helium balloons to a girl…

“Dinah, you come to my home! Come to my home!” exclaims 4-year-old Salina Kadariya, on the stoop of a Mountain Avenue apartment building where several Nepali families have gathered to greet Dinah Mom. Salina wants a princess backpack for school; all the girls do…

…”Servant evangelism” is her term for what they do, an experience she doesn’t believe is easily replicated in modern America — or even on exotic foreign mission trips. “We’re showing our love by serving them, doing what Jesus did,” she says, adding that they don’t proselytize.

They do pick up more than 75 adults and children every Sunday for the Nepali-led Christian service they began in their Jefferson Center space.

Most of the Roanoke Nepalis are Hindu, including many of those attending the church. As Lutjen put it, “For many of them, they’ve got so many gods, they’ve just added Jesus to the list.”

Indeed, most are religiously inclusive, according to translator Laxman Bhandari, a Nepali refugee who arrived in 2009 and lives in southwest Roanoke’s Terrace Apartments with his wife, Lalita.

Though he admires the social work the Martins do, he doesn’t attend their service, preferring the Indian-founded Hindu temple in Roanoke County. “We lost everything — our country, our land. The only wealth we came here with is our culture and religion,” Bhandari said.

“We will celebrate with other religions, as long as there is mutual respect.”… Read more here

Posted in apartment house fires, Baptist, converting refugees, faith-based, Hindu, Iraqi, Nepali Bhutanese, Roanoke, volunteers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Refugees displaced by apartment-house fires

Posted by Christopher Coen on March 21, 2011

I’ve noticed a lot of news stories this winter about refugees displaced from their apartment buildings or rented homes due to fires, most recently in Worcester, MA, as detailed in an article in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The article doesn’t indicate how the fire started, other than that it started near a refugee family’s apartment, but it seems that sometimes these fires begin in aging wiring systems, in old or poorly maintained water heaters and other systems, sometimes other residents start fires, and sometimes refugees start fires while cooking or using space heaters.

For 18 Iraqi refugees who recently arrived in Worcester, fleeing a home, sadly, is a familiar experience.

Last month, a fire in a three-decker at 20 Charlton St. forced all 18 refugees to once again leave their homes and search for a new place to live. But compared to kidnappings, murders and bombings they have experienced in their homeland, an apartment fire is a small setback… Read more here

These stories are a continuing reminder to resettlement agencies about the importance of doing home safety orientation for refugees, and I don’t think a quick 5-10 minute orientation for refugees upon arrival, when they are weary and bleary-eyed from long overseas flights, is enough. We all learn through repetition. Plus, many refugee clients are not familiar with our technologies and mechanisms and need reminders. This is what a Nashville, TN district fire chief had to say to the Tennessean about a recent fire:

…This winter has seen its share of fires caused by space heaters and electrical problems, said District Fire Chief Manuel Fonseca. He said apartment complex fires had hit immigrants.Fonseca, who is in charge of community risk reduction, goes to apartment complexes to talk about safety. He said many of the newcomers, refugees, are not accustomed to some of the everyday electrical appliances that may cause a fire.“Some of these refugees have never been exposed to blow dryers, stoves, things we take for granted,” Fonseca said. “Some don’t know how to operate these things. We teach them to understand what they need to do.”… Read more here

Finally, there is the issue of housing that refugees can afford — which can mean older buildings, not the best construction, and slumlords. There is often a good reason that an apartment complex has a lot of vacancies – seemingly perfect for a new batch of refugee arrivals. They don’t keep up their buildings and nobody wants to live there. Resettlement agencies really need to do some screenings of these landlords and property management companies. The same type of screening and research that they would do for any housing they were considering living in.

Posted in apartment house fires, housing, Iraqi, Massachusetts, Worcester | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

 
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