By Kay Lazar and Raja Mishra
The Boston Globe
Gloucester firefighters took more than 11 minutes to reach a burning house late Sunday, only to find a 42-year-old woman dead inside, 1 mile from a fire station that had been closed recently because of budget cuts.
City officials said yesterday that the victim, Bridget Clary, an aspiring screenwriter, might have been saved if the city had not been forced to close two full-time fire stations after residents voted against a proposed tax increase.
Instead, fire crews stationed in downtown Gloucester had to drive more than 5 miles along slick, winding roads to the fire in the city’s northernmost neighborhood. This resulted in a response time nearly double the 6-minute benchmark set by national fire authorities, officials said.
Gloucester police officers, who are not equipped for fires, arrived at the scene first, but intense heat and smoke stopped their rescue effort. Clary was found unresponsive in her bed, surrounded by a blanket of smoke, officials said.
Clary was pronounced dead shortly afterward. The cause of the fire was under investigation yesterday.
“The paramedic was frustrated because he believed if they had gotten her out earlier, she would have had a good chance to survive,” said Captain Tom LoGrande of the Gloucester Fire Department.
The fiscal issues underscoring the tragedy have resonated in cities and towns throughout the Commonwealth, where residents weary of property taxes have been forced repeatedly to choose between higher taxes and reduced municipal services.
The issue has spilled into the gubernatorial race.
The Democratic nominee, Deval L. Patrick, says that irresponsible tax cutting by the state has caused a financial crisis in municipalities.
The Republican, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, argues that taxes have become overly burdensome.
The independent candidate for governor, Christy Mihos, says that municipal aid, after years of cuts, should be strongly increased.
In Gloucester, the mayor, John Bell, and some lawmakers discussed yesterday the possibility of putting another tax increase on the ballot to fully fund fire services.
Two of the city’s four fire stations, including the one near Clary’s home, were mostly unstaffed starting in July 2004 due to budget cuts.
Politics, however, seemed far from 20-year-old Derek Clary’s mind yesterday as he stood in a daze in front of his mother’s modest seaside house.
“It was just me and her growing up,” he said. “She raised me by myself.”
Clary said his mother had moved to Gloucester about seven years ago, and had worked at a chiropractor’s office and a fruit juice company. She also wrote movie screenplays, recently sending an autobiographical work called “A Mere Reflection” to Warner Brothers, he said.
Gloucester firefighters stationed at the downtown headquarters responded to a 911 call that came in at 11:37 p.m. Sunday, arriving at Bridget Clary’s house in the northern Lanesville neighborhood 11 minutes and 27 seconds later, officials said. They had to drive 5.4 miles. The shuttered Bay View station was 1.2 miles from the scene.
“From Bay View to that scene would have been 3 to 4 minutes tops,” LoGrande said in an interview.
In similar situations, firefighters were slow in responding to three fires last winter in a southeastern Gloucester neighborhood where the Magnolia fire station had been closed, including a blaze that gutted the home of a blind woman on the morning after Christmas.
A Globe analysis in 2005 found that Gloucester had the slowest response time among 19 full-time fire departments on the North Shore and northern suburbs.
Tamara Leland, who lives next door and called 911, said she saw smoke coming from Clary’s house and ran over to help her. “I used the shovel to break the window,” she said, but heavy smoke forced her back.
As word of the tragedy spread, some Gloucester residents voiced outrage.
“It shouldn’t have happened. What is it going to take for this city to wake up?” asked Russell Hobbs, who lives near Clary’s house and who founded a group called Citizens for Public Safety, to advocate for public services. “The city can’t hide now.”
The decision to close the fire stations goes back to June 2004, when Gloucester voters rejected by a 4-to-1 ratio a proposal to override the state cap on property taxes, known as Proposition 2 1/2, which limits the annual increase in taxes and forces municipalities to seek voter approval for extra tax increases. The tax increase would have added $1.23 million to the city budget.
Without the money, firefighters, police, and other city workers were laid off, and the two fire stations were kept shuttered most of the time since the vote.
Bell, who sponsored the unsuccessful 2004 tax increase measure, voiced skepticism that a renewed tax increase effort would succeed.
“I’m sorry for the death. I feel very badly,” he said. “Citizens need to gather with government to look at an override specifically to keep the stations open . . . and to work with our state representatives to change the local aid formula.”
Last year, 164 cities and towns in Massachusetts offered similar tax increase proposals; 87 were approved by voters.