Longtime Still River residents clearly recall the fires that scarred the neighborhood in past years. A 2008 fire damaged the old Baptist Meetinghouse, home of the Harvard Historical Society. A brush fire burned 9 acres of grassland in 2013. An earlier fire destroyed a garage on Still River Depot Road.
That history has left neighborhood residents with admiration for the Harvard firefighters who extinguished those blazes. But it has also left some residents reluctant to let the Fire Department burn a house in Still River as a training exercise. The exercise is scheduled for May 4 or 5, depending on weather.
The house, at 235 Still River Road, has been a rental property for many years and is now vacant. Owner Ted Maxant told the Press the building needs so much upkeep it no longer makes economic sense to maintain it. So he decided to demolish it. He said he intends to put a conservation restriction on the .87-acre site.
The vacant house at 235 Still River Road is slated for a Fire Department training burn May 4 or 5, depending on weather.(Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Demolishing a building requires a permit from the building inspector, and the Fire Department is also notified. When Lt. Andrew Perry learned of the planned demolition, he asked Maxant if the department could burn the house as a live training exercise, and Maxant agreed. Similar training exercises have been held at other houses slated for demolition in Harvard, but such opportunities are “few and far between,” according to Fire Chief Rick Sicard. Often fire departments from more than one town join in the training.
Live training is ‘incredibly valuable’
Sicard and Perry both told the Press that live fire training is crucial for the Fire Department’s preparedness. In a brief phone interview, Perry pointed out Harvard has had only two building fires in the past five years. “We need to be ready to use our skills at a moment’s notice,” he said, “but our newer members have never been in a building fire.” After a recent spate of retirements, new members now make up about half the department. “The ability to do live fire training is incredibly valuable,” Perry said.
Perry explained a live training exercise involves more than just setting a building afire. “These trainings involve many practice burns inside the house to get our firefighters’ training conditions as close to real-life experience as we can,” he wrote in a later email. He added the department has never had a complaint from neighbors after previous live training events.
However, several Still River residents have expressed concerns about the proposed burn. In a letter to the Press last week, Deborah Skauen-Hinchliffe objected to it. And in a long letter to the Select Board, John McGarry cited the danger of a fire spreading to his own house next door, by way of a nearby row of pines or the trees that overhang both houses. (For a briefer version of McGarry’s letter, see page 3.)
Above all, McGarry emphasized the toxins that might be released by the fire. He said the building, which dates to the 1950s or earlier, likely contains asbestos, lead paint, arsenic-based wood preservatives, and many other potentially toxic substances that could be released as gases in a fire. Or water from the fire hoses could wash those pollutants into the building’s leaky basement and from there into the water table. In a phone interview, he described the various chemical compounds as “some of the most toxic stuff known to man.”
McGarry also noted the risks to firefighters who would be taking part in the exercise. “It really can’t be made safe,” McGarry said of burning the house, and he urged the department to use safer, more environmentally sound methods of training.
Select Board Chair Rich Maiore wrote in an email to the Press, “While [Select Board] does not have approval or jurisdiction over burns, we do have questions, as we do with most controlled burns.” He said the issue would be on the agenda for the board’s April 30 meeting.
DEP approves permit for training, finds no asbestos
This week, the state Department of Environmental Protection granted approval for the fire training exercise. Michelle Delemarre of the MassDEP Central Regional Office in Worcester wrote in an email, “MassDEP conducted a site visit of the property on April 10, 2024. The house has been cleaned out and is empty of all household hazardous waste.”
The testing company Accurate Analysis of Auburn inspected the building, from its sheetrock to its tile grout to its shingles. The company’s Feb. 24 report states no asbestos was detected.
Jeffrey Hayes, Harvard’s building commissioner, certified the house met the DEP criteria for fire training. The fuel storage tank had been removed. The building was structurally sound, and it was clean of all hazardous trash such as paint cans and fluorescent light bulbs.
An unidentified abutter wrote to the Board of Health asking if it had oversight of the demolition or could stop the burning. The board referred the letter to James Garreffi, who is director of the Nashoba Associated Boards of Health and also Harvard’s health agent. Garreffi replied the Board of Health does not have oversight on the issue. He concluded his letter: “The potential for contamination from this proposed live exercise [has] been mitigated by the actions taken to prepare the house for burning (asbestos survey, inspection of the property, and cleaning out the structure). The weather conditions on the day of the burning can also further mitigate the risks, and I’m sure the fire department will take care to use the weather conditions to ensure a safe burn.”
