CONNECTICUT - Residents are going through a period of extraordinarily high water high usage, and there is a significant lack of rain in the forecast. The State Department of Public Health said Wednesday that things are about to get ugly, especially in southwest Fairfield County.

On Monday, the Connecticut Interagency Drought Workgroup announced a Stage 3 drought for Hartford, Tolland, Windham, and New London counties. A Stage 3 drought is an "emerging drought event potentially impacting water supplies, agriculture, or natural ecosystems."

Now, a couple of days later, DPH is calling out residents of lower Fairfield County specifically those living in Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stamford, and Westport to reduce their water usage by 20 percent due to drought conditions as well.

Fairfield county as well as the entire state of Connecticut was placed on a Stage 1 drought declaration in June. While Fairfield County remains in Stage 1 drought, water conservation measures are critical to reduce usage of the drinking water supplies that supply the southwest portion of the state.

"Connecticut has been in a drought for some time, and every resident especially those in lower Fairfield County can do their part to reduce demand on some of the public water systems and conserve this vital resource," said acting DPH Commissioner Deidre S. Gifford. "We are experiencing a combination of dry weather, lower than normal precipitation this summer, and likely because of that higher than normal demand for water due to outdoor water use."

Taking simple actions to reduce demand on the public water supply in the region could help stabilize the reservoirs that feed into the regional water system, according to a news release from the DPH. Regional water supplier Aquarion is asking customers to reduce nonessential water usage by 20 percent in addition to its mandatory, twice-weekly irrigation schedule.

The DPH has put forth the following guidelines it says could help in preventing a third drought trigger being hit, and further watering restrictions from being enacted:

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CTs Gone Bone Dry: Heres What You Can Do About It - Patch.com

By Jack Mayne

The City of Burien will be getting $780,000 from the state, with $380,000 earmarked for small Burien businesses as relief from the effects of COVID-19 pandemic.

Burien City Manager Brian Wilson told the Council at its regular virtual session on Monday night (Oct. 5) that the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, the CARES Act, has provided the city, via the state, with a second round of money.

Direct economic helpThis federal legislation was passed to provide fast and direct economic assistance for American workers and families, small businesses, and preserves jobs for American industries The CARES Act provides fast and direct economic assistance for American workers, families, and small businesses, and preserve jobs for our American industries.

Burien businesses to get the grants must be commercial enterprises with a Burien city business license, 10 or fewer employees, have been a for-profit business for 12 months or longer, and have a 25 percent or larger drop in their revenue. Grants up to $5,000 are available, said Wilson.

Ventures Nonprofit of Seattle will administer the funds, and this will be the second round, Wilson said. Ventures says it builds businesses and changes lives by equipping low-income entrepreneurs with training, support and access to capital.

The application period started Oct. 2, and will close on Oct. 15, 2020.

Wilson said there was an earlier grant of $385,000 directed to human services, with a good percentage of that (for) human services.

Vacated Annex hit by copper wire thiefThere has been extreme damage done to the Annex building, now closed and awaiting to be demolished, said Wilson.

There have been real problems with theft and with burglary inside that building to the point where the whole electrical system was compromised. That turned out to be an extreme safety concern, he said. We also had the fire sprinkler system and the water access damaged to the point where we had severe flooding that occurred within there and we have had continued problems.

Wilson said the Burien Police have identified a suspect in the act at the Annex on Sunday night and that person is in custody for burglary.

The burglars intent, said Wilson, was to get copper wire for sale.

Photos courtesy Burien Police / King County Sheriffs Office

Burien Police said that over the last week, they had received complaints of someone breaking into the Annex building and stealing copper from pipes and wiring.

Burien Police/King County Sheriffs Office Special Emphasis Team (SET) detectives monitored the property on Sunday, Oct. 4 then caught the burglar in the act cutting fences, breaking doors and digging up underground utilities in his search for copper.

He was arrested and booked into jail for burglary.

Face masks donated to Highline Public SchoolsIn other business, The city manager told Council the city has donated 5,000 face masks to the Highline School District for their students. The masks were donated to the city and we are happy to redistribute those masks to the Highline School District.

Three citizens honoredThree local people were unanimously proclaimed 2019 Citizens of the Year, an honor usually awarded earlier in the year, and a proclamation, both postponed from May due to the pandemic. The awards were cited by Mayor Jimmy Matta and City Manager Brian Wilson.

The first was for Grace Stiller who is a longtime board member and current interim board president for the Burien Arts Association whose mission is to enrich Burien with arts and culture.

Stiller founded the nonprofit organization Weed Warriors (now known as Nature Stewards) in 2008 as as a way to help youth enrolled in Highline area schools complete their community service requirements through projects that connected them to the natural world; and Stiller and her organization Nature Stewards is involved in the establishment and operations of two community edible gardens in Burien.

Pastors honoredThe two women honored together were Pastors Jenny Partch and Lina Thompson continue to advocate for the most vulnerable in our community, The two Pastors Jenny Partch and Lina Thompson worked with the Ecumenical Leadership Circle to organize emergency financial support for residents of the Fox Cove Apartments, who faced displacement because the building was being sold; and Pastors Jenny Partch and Lina Thompson witnessed the hardship suffered by people experiencing homelessness and those living at risk of losing their housing and felt called to action and organized a diverse coalition of community members and leaders to advocate for renter protections in Burien.

Council followed with a proclamation also originally slated for May but postponed because of the onset of the pandemic. The original Affordable Housing Week Proclamation noted the city found 1,115 people in southwest King County sleeping outdoors without shelter in January of this year, and two in five households in Burien are considered cost-burdened, because they were spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many existing financial constraints for low- and moderate-income households.

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City of Burien to get federal pandemic funds to aid local businesses; copper thief arrested at Annex - The - The B-Town Blog

The fire was started in the back west corner of the store and spread very quickly

by: Joe Gorman

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) Fire investigators say a young child is responsible for a fire last month that destroyed a Mahoning Avenue dollar store.

Capt. Kurt Wright of the Youngstown Fire Department Fire Investigation Unit said the child set fire to wrapping paper and gift bags in the back corner of the store.

The blaze at the 3003 Mahoning Ave. store that broke out about 1:30 p.m. Sept. 24 heavily damaged the store. Heavy smoke flowed from the back west corner of the store, where the fire was set, out the front door. Firefighters had to call in an excavator to knock the back walls down so they could get to spots in the ceiling where it was hard to get water into to put the flames out.

The store is expected to be demolished at some point.

Wright said the fire caught very quickly because the materials that were set afire are very flammable and the store did not have a sprinkler system because of its size. Once the fire spread to the ceiling, it was out of control.

No charges are expected to be filed, Wright said.

Wright said the child set the fire with a lighter they got off of one of their parents. Both of the childs parents smoke, Wright said.

No one was injured in the fire, but the thick smoke, heat and the fact that some of the flames were inaccessible until the excavator was called in caused a second alarm to be put in.

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A 45-year-old woman was charged Wednesday with damaging her hotel room in Anaheim with a butane torch while caring for a toddler.

Christy Michelle Meteer pleaded not guilty to one felony count each of arson, vandalism and child abuse and endangerment at her arraignment in the jail courtroom in Santa Ana. She was ordered to return to court for a pretrial hearing Oct. 21 at the North Justice Center in Fullerton.

Police were called after the sprinkler system was activated about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Extended Stay America at 1742 Clementine St., according to Anaheim police Sgt. Shane Carringer. The defendant is accused of using a butane torch often associated with illicit drug use to burn various parts of her hotel room, he said.

A toddler-aged girl to whom Meteer is related was in the room with her, Carringer said.

Woman Accused of Torching Anaheim Hotel Room with Toddler Inside was last modified: October 7th, 2020 by Contributing Editor

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Joe TaschlerMilwaukee Journal Sentinel

Members of the board that oversees Miller Park approved a plan Tuesday to spend $1.8 million to upgrade the system that controls the ballparks retractable roof.

The Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District boards finance and operations committees voted unanimously to spend the money to improve the system as part of the 2021 maintenance and improvement plan for the ballpark.

The roof panels are moved by a complex system of motors and drives that haul it along a track.

Much of the controls for the system as well as various parts of the drive system have become obsolete and have reached their usable life after 20 years, said Kristi Kreklow, associate director of the district.

In 2018, workers removed and inspected one of the 10 bogies that haul the roof panels into place. The bogie was making unusual noises but was deemed not to be faulty in the $900,000 project.

The spending for the latest project is coming from whats known as the districts segregated reserve fund to which the district and the Milwaukee Brewers each make contributions.

Improving the roofs drive and control system has been planned and is not a surprise. Original plans for the stadium called for the systems to be replaced once they turned 20 years old.

The expectation is that the upgrade, once complete, will last another 20 years, said Mike Duckett, executive director of the district.

Board members also voted Tuesday to spend $1.3 million to replace the ballparks fire detection system.

The roof-control system and the fire-detection system are the most expensive that the board members considered on Tuesday.

The fire-detection system also is 20 years old, Duckett said, and replacing it was also part of the long-term plan for the upkeep of the ballpark.

The ballpark has about 1.2 million square feet of finished space that the fire detection system covers, Kreklow said.

The fire detection system was put to use in July 2014 after a middle-of-the-night fire broke out in a restaurant area in the left field area of the ballpark. The system triggered the ballparks sprinkler system and alerted Milwaukee firefighters, who responded and extinguished the blaze.

The funds for the upgrades will come, in part, from proceeds of a 0.1% sales tax levied in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee and Racine counties. That sales tax, collected since 1996, was stopped in March. The funds were placed into an escrow account and are being used to maintain the stadium.

The state law that created the tax allows the proceeds to be used only for costs related to the ballpark.

Among other spending items, members of the board also voted to spend $130,000 on a female locker room after the first female coach in Major League Baseball, Alyssa Nakken, began coaching this year for the San Francisco Giants.

The San Francisco Giants first base coach Alyssa Nakken jogs to first base during the second inning of an exhibition baseball game against the Oakland Athletics in San Francisco, Tuesday, July 21, 2020.

LEDs will light field

Meanwhile, the process of converting the lights that illuminate the playing field to LEDs has begun. The new LED lighting system has been delivered to the ballpark and installation will take place this off-season.

The new lights are expected to be ready for Opening Day 2021. The project has qualified for a $90,000 Focus on Energy rebate due to the energy savings that the new LEDs will provide, according to the stadium district. That money will be used to help offset the project cost.

Name change in full swing

The Milwaukee Brewers ballpark will be renamed American Family Field, beginning on Jan. 1, 2021, when American Family Insurance takes over the naming rights.

Thousands of signs must be changed at the ballpark, which has been known as Miller Park since it opened.

State law prevents the stadium district from incurring any expenses related to the name change, Kreklow said.

Rent deferral?

The Brewers pay a $1.2 million annual rental fee to the stadium district, and board members are expecting the ball club to ask for some form of rent forgiveness as a result of the pandemic-shortened MLB season in which fans were not allowed to attend games.

During the teleconference meeting on Tuesday, board members asked whether rent forgiveness or deferral was allowed under the lease agreement with the team.

While there is no specific clause in the lease that mentions a pandemic, there are other portions of the lease that likely address such a situation and would allow some sort of rent forgiveness or deferral, Duckett said.

Board members said they would take up the issue when and if the Brewers formally request it.

Call Joe Taschler at (414) 224-2554 or jtaschler@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeTaschler or Facebook at facebook.com/joe.taschler.1.

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Drive system on Miller Park roof to be replaced as part of planned ballpark maintenance, board members decide - Daily Reporter

A battlefield historian, an anthropologist, and an archaeologist: That's the unique team that monitors underground utility assets for Consolidated Utility District of Rutherford County (CUD).

"Imagine a ratepayer decides to install fencing or a sprinkler system, but no underground assets have been marked by CUD," said Matthew Whitten, GIS/GPR Technician for Consolidated Utility District (CUD) of Rutherford County. "While digging holes, the ratepayer hits and breaks a six-inch PVC pipe, or an 18-inch ductile iron pipe. That person would be responsible for time and damages incurred, and the community would be impacted as services are turned off for repair.

"It's absolutely critical to know exactly where underground water lines are located," saidWhitten, who has a background in archaeology with the Tennessee State Historic Commission, Middle Tennessee State University, and the Rutherford County Archaeology Society.

"We serve CUD and our ratepayers by keeping all our water line maps current," said Pam Sykes, GIS Analyst for CUD. "From line locating to helping inspectors out in the field to locating a leak, that all helps us reduce costs and improve water loss prevention."A Rutherford County native, Sykes holds a degree in anthropology from MTSU and spent more than three years working in the state parks of California.

"As the GIS coordinator, I'm the gatekeeper of the data,"Bethany Hall said. "For our ratepayers, I'm like Google. I research and provide options for solving issues. GIS is becoming one of the core departments at CUD. That's happening through the creation of dashboards and web applications."

Before joining CUD, Hall worked for Rutherford County and the City of Murfreesboro in GIS (geospatial information systems) capacities and earned degrees from ITT Tech, American InterContinental University, and MTSU. Though Hall leads the GIS Team at CUD, her previous experiences carried her to distant battlefields overseas."

Hall's journey into GIS began by accident. Her father worked as an electrician and a plumber, and she learned to read blueprints and help him install wiring or plumbing. Through the years, Hall looked for opportunities to use her interests and skills in drafting, geography, and history.

"In 2008, I enrolled at MTSU in the Public History program as a master's degree student," Hall said. "I started doing some training on battlefield GIS. I have a fascination with 20th century warfare, and later I did a study abroad in 2009 with MTSU to the islands of Peleliu and Palau."

A member of Hall's grandmother's family fought in World War II with the First Marine Division at the Battle of Palau and was buried near Pearl Harbor. Hall traced his deployments through the war.

"Palau is tiny -- only two and a half miles long and about a mile and a half across," Hall noted. "It's largely an undisturbed World War II battlefield and still has unexploded ordnance. When I was there, I jumped over a root of a banyan tree, and landed on something metal. I figured my legs were about to be blown off. But what I had landed on were smoke grenades underneath the leaf litter."

Hall would later work on a project with MTSU that would be titled "The Blue Raiders of Vietnam." Sixteen men who attended MTSU during Vietnam died while in service there. Researching the efforts of those soldiers led to Hall's Master of Liberal Arts degree.

The GIS knowledge Hall honed during her education became vital at CUD. "They needed somebody with the GIS background. We're developing a vision for our information, and we can deploy operational dashboards and data-collecting technology to find our underground lines so our field crews can easily locate them."

"Plus, I helped bring in a drone program for mapping and preliminary site design. I've got 30 hours of manned aviation experience and FAA certification. Using drones allows us to check the physical state of our water storage tanks so we don't have to send out a crew in safety gear."

Visit Pamela Sykes' workspace, and you'll see her love of science fiction. Talk to her, though, and you'll hear about her appreciation of science fact.

"My background originally was in physics due to my love of Star Trek," said Sykes. "I went through (MTSU) as a physics and biology double major, but I've always been interested in anthropology, too.

"I really enjoy maps because of orienteering and doing outdoor work. Because of my background in physics, I like the idea of mapping the universe."

After returning to Tennessee, Sykes was approached by a friend about an opportunity with CUD. The role would require GIS capabilities a skillset she had not used in about five years. Fortunately, the knowledge returned to her quickly, and the technology had improved, too.

"The tech became friendlier, thanks to smartphones," said Sykes. "Being able to help our guys in the field use the tools and software, it's all been part of a fun learning curve. As soon as our guys collect data, I'm editing it. Thanks to cell reception, the work moves pretty fast."

Shooting aerial photography and video using CUD's drone gives Sykes yet another avenue to use the latest technology. Like Hall, Sykes is an FAA-licensed drone pilot, having earned her certification in 2019. Part of her work involves flying the drone over worksites for pipe installations or structures for STEP systems (Septic Tank Effluent Pump). The data provided by the drone indicates the exact points where infrastructure has been placed which is vital for inventory control and management.

Sykes has a particular vision in mind for her drone work. "Hopefully, we can start to do some three-dimensional analysis with virtual reality. It would be awesome to see what's underground without having to dig underground. Especially if something is in the road or close to the road that would cause some problems. The thing is, I love technology, and I'm a gadget person. That's part of why I'm here."

Matthew Whitten started as an intern with CUD and learned about GPR (ground penetrating radar) as a method for locating possible submerged walls. That data provides CUD with an idea of where to plot and excavate. The GPR also identifies submerged pipes that were installed throughout the county prior to satellite imagery being taken.

Unearthing the past comes naturally to Whitten since he's fascinated by archaeology. His collegiate career included work for museums, cemeteries, and an American Indian cultural center. He later gained professional experience developing historical maps and analyzing geographic features.

"I believe that even from childhood we're all explorers," said Whitten. "That just kind of bled over from history into archaeology, showing places on a map, indicating movement of peoples, mapping out a dig site. That transitioned me into my GIS work."

Even Whitten's first connection with CUD related to archaeology. "I met Bethany Hall when I was working a dig in Eagleville in 2014. At the time, I was the vice president of the Rutherford County Archaeological Society. One of the projects was cleaning and restoring the Old City Cemetery, which is now about 200 years old. While working for Rutherford County GIS, Bethany and I went plotting all the cemeteries throughout the county, and we ended up finding new cemeteries."

Today, Whitten uses his archaeological skills in ways that benefit CUD and its ratepayers. "For a recent example, a contractor wanted to cut a drive into a new subdivision. However, the contractor noticed that a main service line ran across where the new drive was to be located. Our team determined that the blueprints did not agree with a true location. We used our ground-penetrating radar to locate where the line ran, which was roughly six feet off from the blueprints. That way, we helped them avoid a mistake."

At Consolidated Utility District, our mission continues to be to provide safe drinking water for all residential, industrial, and governmental agencies, meeting and exceeding all federal and state standards at the lowest possible cost with high quality, efficiency, and integrity.

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How 3 explorers serve CUD and its ratepayers - Murfreesboro Voice

My grassman career started 25 years ago when my dad decided I was old enough to push a lawnmower. Once I mastered the art of keeping the hallowed home lawn in venerable shape, I was promoted to taking care of neighbors' lawns. I mowed, raked, fertilized, and sprayed chemicals with a fastidious concern for perfection. Fast forward a couple decades, and here I am, taking care of those same lawns as owner of Organic Lawn. The only difference is my definition of perfection.

Recently, some friends of mine were lamenting how the Joneses lawn next door was more perfect than theirs. The Joneses watered daily, meticulously mowed, and voraciously stamped out diversity in their sea of Kentucky Blue. My friends just bought their home last summer and dont have an underground sprinkler system and spend most of their time biking and trail running instead of moving sprinklers. Their lawn had gone dormant and turned brown. Not only that, it had a couple dandelions. They were living in shame, avoiding eye contact with the Joneses, shopping for a company to install a sprinkler system, and weighing the pros and cons of spraying chemicals to kill the weeds.

Why were my friends trying to keep up with the Joneses? The Joneses are everything that is wrong with lawn care. Watering too frequently, mowing short, and nuking the soil microbiome with chemicals are the last practices anyone should desire to emulate. Allowing for natural diversity, taking care of the biological communities in the soil, and managing in a way that limits water use are far more important. Brown grass in late summer and the occasional dandelion never killed anyone, but glyphosate certainly has. The Joneses should be keeping up with my friends.

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Lawn care is more than watering and killing 'weeds' - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Dear Editor,

I read the article about the Spences Bridge charging station (Battle in Spences Bridge over fate of EV charging station, the Journal, Oct. 1) with great interest, as it is a piece of a very important puzzle for the community of Spences Bridge; a wonderful place, unlike any other, that our family has called home for the best part of 32 years.

The most disturbing part, and there were many, was the quote from [Spences Bridge Improvement District] trustee Ross Figley. When asked why the sprinkler system had not been turned on [at the former elementary school grounds] in 2019 and 2020, Figley replied I didnt feel like turning it on. I have my own stuff to do.

The greatest source of pride for our community has always been our beautiful Green Space. The school and its ground is a special place for many of us. I remember my kids going to the school when we arrived to call Spences Bridge home in 1988. I remember hugging home plate during a fast-pitch ball game and George Billy brushing me back with a windmill fastball that scared the bejeezers out of me. I remember all the Easter Egg hunts with our kids and then our grandkids at the well-manicured, lush green grass of our school yard. I remember the campfire and fireworks of Halloween.

I hope next years Desert Daze will have the bighorn sheep visiting our beautiful green grass of home: the school grounds.

Certainly, after losing our Steelhead family, the off-season has become a challenge, especially to the local businesses. Certainly, electric cars need charging year round, and their numbers are increasing at a significant rate. Certainly, it would be in the best interest of the community to find a way to keep our charging station. BC Hydro has agreed, and says that they only need an agreement with the SBID and it can indeed stay.

Spences Bridge has spoken loud and clear. They would like to keep the station. The only thing standing in the way is the three trustees on the Improvement District, and stand in the way they did. By a vote of 2 to 1 they have made the decision for all of Spences Bridge: the charging station has got to go! So, so sad.

As sad as it is, this is not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is family and friends.

For decades our families have had their own community backyard: the school grounds. Our kids now our grandkids, and even a great-grandkid or two love to come home. Spences Bridge lives within you. It draws you back: the river, the bighorn, the people, the sunshine, the scrumptious fruit and veggies, and yes, the school grounds!

Yes, the charging station is critical to the traveling public who help keep our businesses open, but it takes a back seat to family, friends, and the place they call home: Spences Bridge.

I refer back to the statement of Trustee Figley: I didnt feel like turning it on. I have my own stuff to do. I look at Chair Mike Jefferson, who though he does not live in Spences Bridge, has been the trustee driving the move to get rid of our charging station.

They are elected and paid taxpayer dollars. They have a mandate to represent the wishes of the community, not their own personal agenda; especially an agenda that has a significant impact on our community. This is not about politics: this is about our town, our families, our history and, I would suggest, our future.

The AGM is coming up soon. I would ask the two trustees who voted to have BC Hydro yank our charging station, most likely forever, to do the right thing: step down and call an election.

The grass can still be green, we can replace the dead trees, we can have ball tournaments and put our beautiful school grounds on display to the Trans-Canada Highway audience once again.

Thank you for your service. Now let someone who lives in Spences Bridge and someone who is not too busy to water the lawn make it happen.

Citizens in concern,

Steve and Paulet Rice

Spences Bridge, B.C.

Dear Editor,

In May, Ashcroft Terminal created a working group to examine issues associated with gate installation and develop alternatives to riverfront access at the slough, located on the Inland Ports private property. To be accepted as part of the working group, one had to apply and meet eligibility criteria. Essentially, this meant that all working members were handpicked by Ashcroft Terminals management team.

The working group consisted of representatives from elected bodies, employees of the Terminal, and the community at large. Examining the selections carefully, one finds that all selected elected representatives (Bonaparte Indian Band, Village of Ashcroft, Village of Cache Creek) have direct associations with Ashcroft Terminal or Landucci investments as employees, former employees, or business partners.

Add another three employees of the Terminal and the mix is six to three. Not great odds for true community engagement.

Besides the obvious unbalanced weighting in the working group itself, Ashcroft Terminal also brought in a facilitator, an engineering consultant both paid by Ashcroft Terminal and representatives from CN and CP, for extra expertise or intimidation, depending on how you look at it. The working group was co-chaired by a member of Ashcroft Terminals management team and a former Ashcroft mayor who lobbied hard on Ashcroft Terminals behalf when he served as mayor, and worked for the company after retiring.

I would say that the deck was stacked against the community having meaningful consultation even before the process began. But maybe Im just biased.

Gloria Mertens

Ashcroft, B.C.

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Letters to the Editor Ashcroft Cache Creek Journal - Ashcroft Cache Creek Journal

Thats how long it takes for a room to become engulfed in flames after a fire starts and how much time you have to escape, according to State Fire Marshal Paul Parisi.

Years ago, we had more time to escape a house fire, he said. Legacy furnishings and natural materials took much longer to ignite and engulf a room with fire and smoke.

But the synthetic materials in most modern home furnishings burn faster and hotter and produce much more toxic smoke, Parisi said. Two decades ago, that escape time was about 17 minutes.

Its been a deadly year for residential fires in New Hampshire. Eight people have died in seven homes; none had working smoke alarms, Parisi said.

Just last Sunday, 53-year-old Douglas Holmes was overcome by smoke and died in an apartment house fire in Colebrook.

When Colebrook firefighters arrived at the two-story wood-frame building on Main Street shortly before 7:30 a.m., they found residents on the roof and heavy smoke and fire pouring from the house. One man fell and was hurt. Firefighters rescued four others, according to Colebrook Fire Chief Brett Brooks.

Firefighters then rushed to the back of the building, where they used a ladder to rescue two more residents from an outside porch. Some time later, they learned of another apartment on the second floor.

Thats where they found Holmes, Brooks said. They didnt even realize that there was another apartment door because the smoke was that bad, he said.

There were seven apartments in the building, which was originally a church, and one unit was unoccupied. Nineteen people were displaced in the fire, including seven children.

No warning sounded

The fires cause is under investigation, but it appears the building had no working smoke alarms, Parisi said.

If they had earlier warning of the fire occurring somewhere in the building, they may have had additional time to escape, but instead their escape path was cut off because the fire took possession so quickly, Parisi said.

They didnt have that early warning, and therefore their only escape was the roof and fortunately, they were very lucky that the fire department was able to rescue them off the roof, Parisi said.

John Holmes learned of his brothers death in a call from another family member last Sunday. Doug loved the outdoors, Holmes said in a brief phone interview. Growing up, he loved to fish and he loved to hunt, he said.

The most common causes of accidental residential fires, Parisi said, include improper disposal of smoking materials or woodstove ashes, overloaded electrical circuits, chimneys that have not been cleaned or are too close to combustibles, and food or other items left on a stove.

Those are all preventable fires, he said.

While the spike in fire deaths last spring coincided with the arrival of the pandemic in New Hampshire, Parisi said investigators did not find any connection to the crisis. The individuals involved were not out of work or otherwise home because of the virus, he said.

Most unintentional fatal fires in New Hampshire occur between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., Parisi said.

Indeed, last Sundays fire could have been even more devastating had it occurred overnight, Chief Brooks said. If itd been earlier, with the smoke detectors not working, it would have been questionable whether people would have woken up, he said.

When the fire started, he said, I think most of them were up. They were getting ready to cook breakfast.

Those who lived in the basement apartment and on the first floor got out on their own, but just barely in time, the chief said. A lot of them were barefoot and in bathrobes and whatever they could grab on the way out.

Brooks said the weekend timing of the fire also brought dozens of firefighters to the scene quickly. Its a good thing it was a Sunday and not during the week, he said. Some people travel out of town for jobs.

Consider sprinklers, too

Most people think a fire will never happen to them, Parisi said. Fire does not discriminate, and when there is a fire, smoke alarms are the biggest factor when it comes to giving people time to get out alive.

Closing your bedroom door at night can also buy you critical time. The fire service has an easy-to-remember slogan to drive the message home: Close before you doze.

Most people mistakenly think its safer to leave your bedroom door open, to alert you in case of a fire, Parisi said. A 2018 survey by the UL Firefighter Safety Research Institute found that only 29% of people close their bedroom doors at night.

But closing that door could save your life, buying you time to call the fire department for help, Parisi said.

You have three minutes until that room comes to flashover, and the smoke is so much more toxic than it used to be that one breath of that smoke could be enough to render you unconscious, he said.

The majority of people who die in house fires die from smoke inhalation, not burns, the fire marshal said. But if you have your door closed, youre preventing all that heat and smoke from entering your room, he said. Closing your door can buy time for help to arrive if you become trapped.

The best smoke alarms are interconnected, Parisi said, so that if one goes off, the rest will too. If a smoke alarm does go off, check the doorknob first, he advised. If its warm, dont open the door, he said, but if its cool, you can open the door and make your escape.

Parisi also encourages people to install residential sprinkler systems in their homes, especially in new construction. What that does is it suppresses the fire so it does not extend beyond the area of origin, he said.

These systems save lives, the fire marshal said. There has never been a multi-fatal fire in a residential sprinklered building in the United States, he said.

Sprinkler heads will only go off if the heat in the room reaches a certain temperature. Theyre not triggered by smoke, Parisi said. Consider it just like you consider putting a lawn sprinkler system in, he said. It could save your life and it could save your familys lives.

Colebrook Fire Chief Brooks has something else he wants people to remember. When in doubt, get out, he said. Everybody wants to save their house, but you can rebuild your house.

Its tough on firefighters to lose someone in a fire, Brooks said.

You feel bad for the family and you always wonder if there was more that you could do, he said. But sometimes just the circumstances the smoke, the fire, the heat you still do your best to knock it down so you can get in there, but time is always a factor.

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2020 was a deadly year for house fires in NH - The Union Leader

Almost three decades after the plans were first mooted, over nine years behind schedule and more than 4bn (3.6bn) over budget, Berlins new international airport is finally ready to open its doors.

But the already tortuous birth of Berlin-Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport (BER) expected to open on 31 October, and once hailed as a celebration of the ambitious German reunification project, has only been compounded by the decision to unveil it in the middle of a pandemic.

With the air industry plunged into the worst crisis of its 100-year history, most airplanes grounded and major airlines facing the prospect of bankruptcy, even the airports chief admitted the endeavour is at best courageous, at worst foolhardy.

During a recent guided tour ahead of the opening, Engelbert Ltke Daldrup, the chairman of Berlin-Brandenburg airport since 2017, said: Not only Berlin, but by extension the whole of Germany became a laughing stock over this. German engineers like me have felt embarrassed.

He admitted it may take years for the industry, and by extension his airport, to crawl back to anything like its former standing.

We are ready for take off, he said. But I expect it to take as long as maybe three or four years, for us to reach pre-coronavirus level of business ... the economic situation is dramatic.

His operating manager, Patrick Mller, goes so far as to say a recovery cannot be expected until there is a vaccine.

Daily passenger numbers at BER are down by 100,000 passengers compared to before the crisis. It is currently haemorrhaging 1m a day, on top of high losses due to being over budget and years behind schedule.

Four months ago Lufthansa, the national airline and the second largest passenger carrier in Europe, had already received a 9bn state bailout, in an already stark warning of the state the air industry was already in.

Even before it opens, the operators of BER, 11 miles south of the centre of the German capital, which replaces the East German era airport Schnefeld, have requested 300m in taxpayers money just to keep it afloat. Detractors have accused the operators of using the coronavirus as a cover-up for an already existing crisis.

In a further sign of how diminished the air industry is, hundreds of airport workers will be put on Kurzarbeit, the German government scheme where employees accept reduced working time and pay and the state compensates them.

Finally, BER is ready to start operating, but there is very little air traffic and that really is tragic, admitted Roland Bhm, head of testing.

Nevertheless, he is going through with meticulously planned dress rehearsals, with thousands of extras members of the public who have been drafted in as volunteers to test the workings of everything across the 300,000 sq metres space, from check-in procedures, to the comprehensibility of signs and symbols, right down to the toilets.

Currently there are 430 testers. Silvia Schulz, a gardener from Berlin, has brought her mother Elke for what she calls a historic day out to the airport.

I love flying, but obviously havent done so since before March, so it feels a bit nostalgic, she said, clad in a face covering and picking up a bag of freebie airport memorabilia, including a BER coffee cup, a keyring, and a drawstring bag. While she cant fly, she will have to make do with todays test destinations of Grenoble, and later Bournemouth, which will see Schulz and her mother driven down the runway in a bus half-full of masked, socially-distancing fellow travellers.

We will have to pretend we are really flying. Though if I had the choice, Id go to the Maldives, she said. She and her mother have followed the dramas of the airports failure to open over the years, which has led to a range of wry slogans on T-shirts and mugs such as: Lets just move the city of Berlin to a functioning airport.

Its turned the city into a bit of a joke and added to the distrust in politicians and to be quite honest, I will only believe it is to open next month when it really happens, she admitted.

Its shiny walnut panelling, and Jurassic-era beige floor, have prompted German design critics to say the airport is embarrassingly 1990s, the decade when it was first conceived in the euphoric post-unification era. The choice of the name, Willy Brandt after the former West German chancellor, whose strongest legacy is his attempt to achieve reconciliation between western and eastern Europe during the Cold War, is in a similar spirit.

Throughout the airport preparations are being made for the opening day. Plastic is being taken off monitors, advertising billboarding is being installed, and equipment is being moved from Tegel airport in the west, due to close in November. Everything appears to be a reminder of how life used to be.

Daldrup now insists the airport, once considered too small to cope with the growth in air travel, will now be really useful as long as people physically distance.

But even before the pandemic the project was beset with challenges. Its construction was beset by rows, often played out very publicly, over trivial matters like the type of rawl plugs used and more seriously the sprinkler system, the cabling and fire doors. Almost all Berliners remember how, in the winter of 2013, no one knew how to turn the terminal lights off, so they were left to burn day and night for weeks on end.

Daldrup blames European over-regulation for many of the complications. But he said the result of repeated returns to the drawing board is the safest airport in the world.

The opening ceremony, once expected to be a big party which would attract hundreds of local and international celebrities, he said, will now be low-key.

Some commentators have said one of the more recent fall-outs over noise reduction specifications campaigned for by local residents is a fitting denouement to what has been a humiliating drama.

The southerly runway was redesigned in an effort to reduce noise. But the aviation trade union Cockpit argued it would force pilots to make a complex 145-degree turn on takeoff, referred to as a Hoffmanns curve. The national association of air traffic control has referred to the turn as challenging, while pilots wary of its potential to unnerve passengers have already nicknamed it the puke curve.

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'We were a laughing stock': Berlin airport finally finished as Covid bites - The Guardian