Ancestors

Written by Mark Dominus on 2025-01-22 at 14:15

I think the MOVE disaster is very unusual in that it doesn't fit well into any of these categories.

In 1985 Philadelphia police bombed a dwelling inhabited by the MOVE group. A gas tank on the roof caught fire. The police let the fire burn so that they could drop tear gas through the destroyed roof int the upper floors. Firefighters were then unable to control the fire. Six adults and five children died in the fire, although some accounts say that some of them were shot by police while trying to flee the building. 61 other nearby dwellings burned down.

Wikipedia has it on the "List of town and city fires" but I feel that doesn't really do justice to the sequence of events. Some town fires are caused by a cow kicking over a lantern or whatever.

Maybe there should be a separate entry for "List of giant fucking clusterfucks where malice, incompetence, and insanity made everyone else as miserable as possible." Maybe they could put the first World War on that list.

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Written by Mark Dominus on 2025-01-22 at 14:20

When I first interviewed for a job at Penn in 1990, one of the people I talked to asked me if I was sure I wanted to move to Philadelphia. "Philadelphia," they said, "is a city with big problems."

"I'm from New York," I said. "I don't think Philadelphia has any problems that New York doesn't also have." I was thinking of poverty, crime, racism, pollution, all the problems that big cities have. But I hadn't heard about MOVE, which really was one-of-a-kind.

"Hmmmm," they said.

(I would have come here even if I had known.)

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Toot

Written by Mark Dominus on 2025-01-22 at 14:29

Oddly, one way in which Philadelphia is different from most other big cities is that it has not ever had a really big fire. New York, for example, had catastrophic fires in 1776, 1835, and 1845.

I've heard this attributed to Philadelphia having had good urban design and fire codes in the early days. Attached houses in Philadelphia always have thick stone or brick walls in between that prevent fires from spreading as quickly.

Also the Philadelphia fire department was established earlier than most other U.S. cities'. It was started in 1736, by a smart, civic-minded young fellow named (checks notes) Franklin.

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Descendants

Written by Bill Ricker on 2025-01-22 at 14:47

@mjd

The even-younger Franklin grew up in Boston (which had a professional fire chief from 1678, a municipal portable hand pump from 1658, banned wooden chimneys and thatched roofs from the beginning in 1631), so Franklin had expectations that the otherwise very orderly City of Brotherly Love in Penns' Woods didn't meet, so he fixed it.

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Written by Mark Dominus on 2025-01-22 at 14:48

@n1vux Interesting, thanks!

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Written by Mark Dominus on 2025-01-22 at 15:00

@n1vux Franklin wasn't a kid when he founded the Philadelphia fire department.

I subtracted 1706 from 1736 and got 20. 😖

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Written by Bill Ricker on 2025-01-22 at 15:06

@mjd

My kid will be 36 in a couple years and will still be my kid 😉.

Since we mostly hear of still-randy Old Ben at 70+ in Congress, it's good to speak of Kid Franklin decades before.

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