UPDATE 2 (8:35 p.m.): Several pets were also affected by today’s fire at 51st and Ludlow. The Red Paw Emergency Relief Team were on the scene searching for cats missing after the fire. Sadly, two cats perished in the fire and two more are still missing:
UPDATE on S.51st Street: Sadly 2 cats did not survive, 2 cats still missing. We will search again in the morning.
— Red Paw Relief Team (@RedPawRelief) November 25, 2014
We are on-scene searching for 3 missing cats from a fire on the 100blk of S.51st St in #Philly pic.twitter.com/6euxeMBJwN
— Red Paw Relief Team (@RedPawRelief) November 25, 2014
UPDATE: Red Cross is assisting six people affected by the fire. We’re trying to confirm neighbors’ information that no one was injured in the fire.
4:40 p.m.: West Philly Local readers are reporting a fire at a three-story duplex at the corner of 51st and Ludlow. Smoke is coming out of the 2nd and 3rd floor windows. Fire fighters are on the scene.
Photos by Matty Starrdust.
November 24th, 2014 at 5:38 pm
Neighbors are reporting that everybody got out safely. That’s an unconfirmed report, though.
December 4th, 2014 at 10:53 pm
More than a week later and there’s still a pile of debris taller than I am out front of this building. That would never be allowed to happen in Rittenhouse Square. #BlackLivesMatter, but you wouldn’t know it living in West Philly.
December 5th, 2014 at 9:20 am
Matty, I had a whole response typed out explaining I submitted a 311 request and with information why it might be difficult for the city to get the owner to come take of it after the fire but the WPL system keeps telling me my message is spam and won’t post it.
December 5th, 2014 at 9:22 am
Giving it another try.
Matty, I placed a 311 request on the address for the fire-related debris. The response may be that the city will issue the owner a violation for it.
A problem may be the owner on record seems to have died almost ten years ago. Additionally, there is no rental license information on record. The question is whether whoever has been operating this as a duplex will take care of it post-fire.
December 5th, 2014 at 3:57 pm
@Neighborhood Liaison
the point being that public health and safety are not the responsibility of individual property owners … they are the city’s responsibility …
belied by the utter lack of attention, investment and services paid to ungentrified West Philly is the fact this is a very densely populated residential area we’re talking about, wherein a good deal of hazardous material is exposed, in a residential street and totally unaccounted for … the city’s neglect in this situation is emblematic of the double standard communities of colour face in Philadelphia and across the country … behind all the bureaucratic flailing over licensing and “ownership” are, in my mind, greater questions about power and responsibility … when facts on the ground endanger human lives, the response (or lack of a response) by those with the ability/power/resources (whatever you wanna call it) to respond to the situation is highly political, even if we’re inculcated with the notion that this neglect is part of a natural/inevitable (rather than social and economic) “ordering of things”
university city, as reported by this news outlet (https://www.westphillylocal.com/2014/09/16/boundary-of-penns-home-buying-program-moves-further-west/) has extended its home-buying programme (and its economic, social, and political power along with it) west to 57th street … it is accordingly remarkable to me when a behemoth like UCD, equipped with private clean-up crews to provide specialised services to the serf-gentrifiers under its protection, fails to live up to any semblance of its purported civic sensibilities when able-but-unwilling to aid in cleaning up after centuries of racist neglect and injustice …
we already know what their answer is, though, don’t we? more of the same developer spiel … their hands are tied ,and anyway, the solution is obviously not social justice but to replace abject Black bodies with affluent white ones … the city and the development bourgeoisie have failed, and will continue to fail, at the cost of uncounted human lives …
the answer MUST be community control of land and resources for the immediate fulfillment of human needs and investment in the hard work of healing the disastrous social consequences of centuries of political and economic racism … all power to the people!
PS: i apologise to readers and moderators for my poor formatting, currently dealing with a broken keyboard
December 5th, 2014 at 4:03 pm
it should also be noted that West Philly Local’s concern with the wellbeing of cats on the property visibly outweighs the attention/concern paid to displaced human beings
December 5th, 2014 at 6:24 pm
Nowhere in my post did I dispute any of Matty’s assertions nor am I going to. I merely took action to attempt to get the issue fixed.
In other drafts of my spam-rejected comment, I explained that the city may eventually take care of everything itself if the violations go unaddressed by the property owner though that process takes time and may prove frustrating to near neighbors. Or the situation may be dangerous enough that the city will come out to take care of it as a first step and then bill the owner. I removed sentences as I was trying to figure out what was causing my comments to be flagged.