While aldermen praised the Springfield Fire Department for its response to the fire Saturday at the former Goodwill facility on Eleventh Street, some are frustrated with the lack of accounting of the city’s homeless.
The fire is thought to be the largest in Springfield in decades.
“I’m concerned,” Ald. Ralph Hanauer said during Tuesday’s city council meeting. “We’ve got these homeless advocates that are out there, and, if you read the articles, it makes you lead to believe that they knew that people were in there squatting in some of these places. To me, it’s their responsibility to let us know – or let the police know or whatever. In this case, we didn’t know how many people were in there. We could have lost ten people or whatever.”
Fire chief Brandon Blough says it’s not as easy as Hanauer makes it sound.
“Sometimes we know that people are in places, and sometimes we don’t,” said the chief. “Sometimes they’re there, and sometimes they’re not. Just because you think that people may be in a building doesn’t mean they’re there all the time. Sometimes they’re there, sometimes they crash with friends, sometimes they do go to the shelter.
“We interact with them a lot.”
Blough said as of late Tuesday afternoon, nobody is unaccounted for, but a cadaver dog will still tour the scene, just in case any bodies are in what’s left of the building, which burned early Christmas Eve morning.