Fire rages in Brooks House, leaving 60 needing ... - The Commons

12 BROOKS HOUSE FIRE THE COMMONS • Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Saddened tenants relieved to be safe
RANDOLPH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS
State fire investigators enter the Brooks House on
Monday afternoon.
By Randolph T. Holhut
The Commons
BRATTLEBORO—State
and local officials are assessing
the damage done to the Brooks
House after a devastating fire
Sunday night left as many as 60
people homeless, and the future
of the town’s largest commercial
building in doubt.
The owner of the building,
Jonathan Chase, said Tuesday
that he is determined to save the
Brooks House.
“If I have anything to do with
it, that building will still be standing
there,” he said.
Chase said he is working with
engineer Bob Stevens, of Stevens
& Associates of Brattleboro, to
assess the structural integrity of
the building.
“We’re still in the evaluation
stage, particularly the areas that
were compromised by fire and
water,” said Chase.
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Chase’s determination to preserve
a historic downtown landmark
is shared by Vermont Gov.
Peter Shumlin.
“[The Brooks House] is obviously
an important part of the
downtown, and as governor, I
will make sure we do everything
we can to make sure we turn this
tragedy into something positive,”
said Shumlin after touring the
fire site on Monday.
Patricia Moulton Powden,
deputy secretary and economic
development director at the
state Agency of Commerce and
Economic Development, said
Monday that “the first hope is
to save what we’ve got and keep
this historic building in place.”
She said that she will remain
in close contact with the town to
help leverage any resources her
agency can offer.
Jeff Lewis, executive director
of the Brattleboro Development
Credit Corp. (BDCC), said the
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By Thelma O’Brien
The Commons
BRATTLEBORO—Two
fire-displaced Brooks House
residents seemed anything but
troubled on Monday as they
milled around the Gibson-Aiken
Center on Main Street, their refuge
for the time being.
On Sunday, Deanna Garcia,
who’s lived at Brooks House
for about five years, was glad
to be back in her fourth-floor
apartment after convalescing at
Thompson House for six weeks,
recovering from hip replacement
surgery.
She’d been home for only
one night.
When she first smelled smoke,
she said she wasn’t that bothered,
because cooking smells often
permeate the hallways.
But when she heard the alarm,
she knew it was real, and she fled
to the nearest fire escape with
her cane. She was subsequently
helped down the stairs.
“It must have taken 15 minutes
to get me down,” she said,
chuckling about how her walker
was now just sitting by itself in
the hall. Another was secured for
her at the Gibson-Aiken.
She described the walker training
she’d received at Thompson
House.
State offers help, resources
in the aftermath of the blaze
biggest problems for the commercial
tenants right now is “inventory
and business continuity.
They need to get back in business
now.”
Town Manager Barbara
Sondag said Tuesday that
BDCC and Building a Better
Brattleboro are working with
Chase and with all the businesses
in the Brooks House to
assist with the aftermath of the
disaster.
“We’re working diligently to
get them through all the hurdles,”
said Sondag.
Two hats for
DeGray
The Brooks House fire was
personal for Selectboard Chair
Dick DeGray. His wife, Melissa
Galanes, owns the Galanes
Building, which sits next to the
Brooks House.
“The fire department did an
outstanding job forcing the fire
north rather than letting it burn
south, which would have been
truly more devastating than it
was,” DeGray said Monday.
Aside from minor smoke and
water damage, the properties in
the Galanes Block were relatively
unaffected.
“It’s been a long 20 hours,”
said DeGray, who praised the
work and cooperation of the
emergency responders.
The damage and disruption
from the fire was something that
an already fragile downtown
economy did not need, he said.
“We’ve been kind of keeping
our heads above water, which it
better than most towns,” he said.
“To have this happen, to have
50 percent of the prime real estate
on this side of Main Street
closed, will hurt.”
But DeGray said the town is
“energetic, and we hope to use
that energy to help Jonathan in
any way we can to help him rehabilitate
his building and get his
businesses back in operation and
his tenants back home.”
Looking long-term
Building a Better Brattleboro
Executive Director Andrea
Livermore said that assuming
the best possible scenario — that
the Brooks House’s facade can
be retained and the funding is
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“If you could stand with your
walker for 14 minutes, that was
good,” she said, having just been
interviewed, standing, by local
television and press reporters
and more or less demonstrating
her skills.
She didn’t think she’d done
damage to her hip with all of the
moving around and was more
worried about her knees, which
she said caused her some pain.
“I don’t know how to explain
it, but if you’d seen me last night
[in the Harmony parking lot
where the evacuees had gathered],
you’d think I was the happiest
person in the world,” she
explained. “It was like a dream.”
She left basically with just the
clothes on her back, and said that
it was hard losing family photographs
and scrapbooks.
“Everything else is replaceable,”
she observed. “I had an
old TV and an old computer, and
I was about to get a new one.”
She was looking forward, she
said, to spending the night at
the Gibson-Aiken “in the couch
area. There’s plenty of food and
we have bathrooms and we even
have showers.”
Her daughter, Marcella
Unaitis, of Vernon, was on the
scene and offering comfort.
Meanwhile, Alfred Hughes Jr.
RANDOLPH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS
Crews from Renaud Brothers of Vernon begin demolishing the fifth floor
“penthouse” of the Brooks House on Tuesday.
available to rehabilitate the building
— the big question remains
is: “How long is it going to take?”
“A major segment, the heart,
of the downtown district, is going
to be out of commission for a
while, and that is not good news
for everyone that’s downtown,”
she said Monday.
While downtown Brattleboro
has survived major commercial
fires before, most recently
the Paramount Theater in 1991
and the Wilder Block in 2004,
Livermore said the Brooks
House fire is bigger by several
orders of magnitude.
“In the end, it is going to be
up to Jonathan to decide what
he wants to do with this building,”
she said.
Sondag stressed Tuesday that
it will take time, and teamwork at
all levels, to rebuild the Brooks
House.
“There are no easy answers or
solutions, but the only way this is
going to happen is in a collaborative
manner,” she said. “It is vital
that we keep these businesses
running and that we find homes
for everyone who was displaced
by the fire.”
“The best thing I heard from
Jonathan was that he wants to
rebuild and take this opportunity
to make it better,” said
DeGray. “We have a great, great
was warding off the blues with
some dark humor, especially
about his three-month-old laptop,
left behind and probably not
recoverable.
“I was just learning how to
use it,” he moaned, shrugging
his shoulders with regret.
Hughes said he’s lived at
Brooks House for about 15
years. He came to Vermont because
he had friends here, and is
originally from the United States
Virgin Islands.
A helpful woman standing
nearby urged him repeatedly to
call if he needed a place to stay
that night.
He said he’d be all right, and
had stayed with friends the night
of the fire. He was planning to
stay at the Gibson-Aiken that
night in a room where what
looked like brand new cots had
been set up.
His experience was not unlike
Garcia’s, but he lived on the
third floor.
“I was in my apartment on the
Internet, and I heard the alarm
go off, but that’s not unusual,
and there was smoke in the hall,
also not unusual,” he explained.
“Then I heard the sprinklers go
off and I knew something was
wrong. I went downstairs and
out the front door. That was
Other fires illuminate
economic realities
Preservation group among those working
to find ways to rebound from catastrophe
By Olga Peters
The Commons
BRATTLEBORO—The
Preservation Trust of Vermont
and Building a Better Brattleboro
have started working together to
help downtown rebound from
Sunday night’s six-alarm fire at
the Brooks House at the corner
of Main and High streets.
“It’s obviously a real tragedy
for the community,” said Paul
Bruhn, executive director of
Preservation Trust of Vermont.
Bruhn said that the trust has
released $1,000 in grant money
to Bob Stevens of Stevens and
Associates, P.C. to do a structural
assessment of the building.
community, and it’s even greater
when it comes together in a crisis.
We didn’t have a funeral
[Monday]. We are going to have
a new beginning.”
JEFF POTTER/COMMONS FILE PHOTO
Tenant Alfred Hughes
Jr. (seen here in 2010’s
Strolling of the Heifers
parade) evacuated his
third-floor apartment
Sunday night. “I left
everything,” he said.
around 9 p.m.”
He joined others in the
Harmony Lot.
“You could see flames coming
out from the fifth floor,” he said.
“Then I heard everyone was at
Aiken, so I came here.”
Hughes said he’d already
heard from officials that apartments
in three downtown buildings
were being considered
for the former Brooks House
tenants.
Hughes and Garcia both said
they were pretty sure they’d
never get back into their old
apartments to see what survived.
“I left everything,” Hughes
said.
Bruhn said Stevens’s assessment
will help determine if the
building can be salvaged, and, if
so, what steps should be taken to
rehabilitate it.
Sometimes a fire-damaged
building looks worse than it really
is, said Bruhn, “and let’s
hope that’s the case in this
situation."
Rebuilding will also depend on
the robustness of owner Jonathan
Chase’s insurance policy, said
Bruhn.
“It’s crucial,” he said.
A model for
Brooks House?
The Wilder Building at 30-36
Main St., which burned in 2004,
could provide a model for the rebuilding
of Brooks House.
According to Bruhn, the building,
although ravaged by the fire,
maintained its structural integrity
and could be saved.
But insurance couldn’t cover
the costs of rebuilding, said
Bruhn. According to a 2005
Preservation Trust newsletter,
the Brattleboro Fire Department
and the
Department of Labor and
Industry also “required that the
unstable, upper two floors either
be demolished or stabilization
work started within two weeks,”
creating impossible demands on
owner Fred Noble.
So Noble turned the Wilder
Building over to the Windham
Housing Trust — then the
Brattleboro Area Community
Land Trust — which, as a nonprofit,
had access to a wider array
of grants, loans and funding that
a private owner does not.
A similar scenario occurred
with the Putney General Store
after it burned in 2008.
When owner Erhan Oge decided
not to rebuild the longtime
Putney landmark, the
Putney Historical Society acquired
the building and used its
nonprofit status to harness rebuilding
funds and provide tax
deductions to individuals wishing
to contribute to the effort.
The Historical Society is rebuilding
after a second fire in
November 2009 leveled the
structure.