This blog presents Metropolitan Engineering Consulting & Forensics (MEC&F) claim management and claim investigation analyses of some of the typical claims we handle
1 person dead following fatal northwestern Arkansas house fire
ROGERS, Ark. (AP) - One person is dead following a fatal house fire in northwestern Arkansas.
The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports (http://bit.ly/1yzGUTR
) that the fire was reported just after 6 a.m. Sunday in Rogers. Deputy
Fire Chief Bryan Hinds says the caller reported that a person was still
inside the house.
Hinds says that when firefighters arrived, the
room the victim was in was engulfed in flames. A second person who was
inside the residence when the fire started was not injured.
The
name and other details about the victim were not immediately released.
Property records show the house is owned by James T. Wilfong and Judy
Gayle Wilfong.
Hinds says the cause of the fire is unknown and is under investigation.
SOUTHERN COOKING: A NEGLECTED POT OF GREASE IS THE CAUSE BEHIND A FIRE AT AN APARTMENT COMPLEX NEAR THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA THAT LEFT 25-30 PEOPLE HOMELESS
A neglected pot of grease is the cause behind a fire at an apartment
complex near the University of Central Florida Saturday night that left
25 to 30 people without a home, according to a state Fire Marshal
spokeswoman.
Orange
County Fire Rescue crews were on scene at The Place at Alafaya
apartment complex on Mackay Boulevard and Wagon Road after 11 p.m.
Saturday.
“We came out and all we saw was flames,” said resident
J.C. Hervins, who lives next door to where the fire started. He said he
lost “literally everything.” Pradens
Pierre-Louis lives above where the fire started. “I could not see
anything. I fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom.”
“The whole neighborhood was full of smoke,” Jackie Albino, a neighboring resident, said. Fire
Marshal spokeswoman Ashley Carr said Sunday that the fire was
accidental, originating when a resident left a pot of grease on the
stove and left the room. He came back to find the pot on fire.
The
fire then spread to several other units in the 20-unit building, Carr
said, but did not spread to other buildings in the larger complex.
Orange County Fire Rescue said eight apartments were affected,
sustaining either water or fire damage.
All residents were
evacuated, but one resident injured himself on broken glass when he
attempted to return to his unit to save his pets, Carr said. One dog was
saved but another dog and two cats were lost.
The local Red Cross
is assisting residents with a place to stay, Carr said, while apartment
management is attempting to find homes for the displaced within the
larger complex.
Freezing Rain, Snow and Flash Flooding Create Fatal Vehicle Pileups, Property Damage and Injuries On Sunday, January 18, 2015
A deadly mix of ice and rain caused
multi-vehicle pileups on roads from Pennsylvania to Connecticut,
and is set to bring more hazardous driving conditions tonight
with freezing rain and snow forecast for New England.
Freezing-rain advisories covered 32 million people earlier
today, the Weather Channel said. In areas patrolled by the New
Jersey State Police, 428 accidents were reported while 186
requests for aid were made, according to a Twitter post by the
police around noon.
News 12 New Jersey showed videos of accidents on Route 80,
Interstate 95 and the Garden State Parkway, each involving more
than a dozen cars and trucks driving on roads made treacherous
by rain that immediately turned to ice. Officials this morning
encouraged people to stay at home.
The Route 80 accident in Leonia, New Jersey, involved more
than 38 cars and trucks, News 12 reported. At about 10 a.m., the
Port Authority of New York & New Jersey closed the Palisades
Interstate Parkway approaches to the George Washington Bridge.
The agency also shut the Outerbridge Crossing and Bayonne and
Goethals bridges connecting New Jersey and the New York City
borough of Staten Island before reopening them with 10 mph speed
restrictions.
In southeast Pennsylvania, one person was killed before 7
a.m. and at least 30 injured in a crash involving 56 vehicles in
the westbound lanes of Interstate 76 near Philadelphia, NBC 10
reported. A separate pileup on Interstate 476 in Delaware County
left at least two people dead, the Associated Press reported,
citing state police.
Salt Spreaders
Numerous accidents were also reported on major highways in
Connecticut, including Interstate 91, I-84, I-95 and Route 83,
because of the storm, the Hartford Courant reported. A crash
caused by the slippery conditions claimed the life of an 88-year-old woman in Connecticut, AP said, citing police.
New York’s Department of Sanitation sent salt spreaders
across the city this morning, while New Jersey Transit awaited
the salting of roads before resuming some bus routes. A flood
warning was later issued citywide until 6 p.m. as the area
continues to receive cold rain. Conditions have since moved above freezing along the I-95
corridor from Boston to Philadelphia, the Weather Channel said.
Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine could still have freezing
rain at 5 p.m., while cold air may later bring between 5
and 10 inches of snow to some inland regions of those states,
the channel said.
A treacherous "flash freeze" iced the Lower Hudson
Valley on Sunday, shutting major highways and causing dozens of crashes
and spinouts.
While Monday and Tuesday are expected to be dry and cold
with temperatures in the mid-30s, commuters likely will encounter a
wintry mix of snow and rain Wednesday.
A treacherous "flash freeze" iced the Lower Hudson Valley on Sunday,
shutting major highways and causing dozens of crashes and spinouts.
While Monday and Tuesday are expected to be dry and cold with
temperatures in the mid-30s, commuters likely will encounter a wintry
mix of snow and rain Wednesday.
"The worst-case scenario is 3 to 4 inches," AccuWeather.com meteorologist Tom Kines said. "It's not out of the question. The best-case scenario is flurries."
Rain
falling on frozen roads between 7 and 8 a.m. Sunday turned seemingly
every paved surface — from county blacktop to sidewalk cement — into a slippery sheet of ice. The
conditions forced road closures across the region. The New York State
Thruway was closed southbound from Newburgh to the New York City line.
Palisades Interstate Parkway was closed for hours before the ice gave
way to warming temperatures.
In Westchester, the Saw Mill River
Parkway, Bronx River Parkway and Hutchinson River Parkway experienced
partial closures and delays.
In one of the day's worst accidents,
five people were hospitalized after their car overturned on the Taconic
State Parkway at the Route 202 exit in Yorktown.
Icy roads were to
blame for a 15-car pile-up near Exit 13 on the southbound lanes of the
Thruway. The 9 a.m. accident sent three people to Westchester Medical
Center, including one with critical head injuries, and four to Nyack
Hospital. Emergency responders reported a huge volume of calls.
"It was a pretty hectic morning," said Ray Florida, executive director of Rockland Paramedic Services.
Many vehicles sat abandoned — several after crashing into concrete
barriers or other cars — on Interstate 287. Drivers walked the emergency
lane talking on cellphones or tried to stay dry as the freezing rain
fell.
"As soon as the rain started it became a disaster," Kines
said. "The roads froze right away. If you were on the road, you had no
warnings. You not only had a skating rink locally but across New Jersey,
southern New York and eastern Pennsylvania."
Officials across the
region said trucks were sent out to salt and treat roads. The situation
improved by late morning as temperatures rose into the upper 30s. By
mid-afternoon, a heavy blanket of fog hit the region. Rainfall turned to
flash flood warnings.
Metro-North Railroad cautioned travelers to be careful when heading to train stations
(CNN) — The mayor of Danbury, Connecticut, appears to be the first to give the Northeast’s ice storm a hashtag: #Icezilla. Mark Boughton tweeted updates to his constituents about the icy
weather; some of them were enduring interruptions on the metro this
weekend as freezing rain coated Connecticut and Pennsylvania and pelted
New Jersey and New York. “Still slippery, but calls are slowing down in our 911 center. #Danbury #Icezilla,” Boughton tweeted. Don’t drive. Just don’t do it, fire and police officials are urging. They said every surface is slick: Bridges, overpasses, interstates.
A photo on the Danbury Fire Police Facebook page shows a lighted road sign that says, “The roads are wicked slippery!” Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Charles Metzger
said conditions will warm as the day goes on, but it will continue to
rain throughout the day. Two people have died in accidents related to black ice in the Philadelphia area, state police said. After crashing into at least 20 cars piled up on Interstate 76, one
person was killed after getting out of a car and being hit by an
oncoming vehicle, authorities said. Black ice coated Interstate 95 near
the city, law enforcement told CNN, and there was an accident at every
mile marker. Pile-ups shut down parts of both interstates, a dispatcher said. At least one person has died in Hartford County, Maryland, said State Police spokesman Greg Shipley. There have been dozens of crashes throughout central and northern
Maryland on Sunday, he said. Most of them occurred in Howard, Baltimore,
Harford and Cecil counties. Troopers who had worked through the night kept working when their
shifts were over, and more troopers were called in to help assist
passengers who had accidents, he said. Statewide, Shipley estimates that at least 100 car accidents have occurred. “The State Highway Administration is out in force salting” bridges, ramps and overpasses, he said. The slick roads are causing the highest number of traffic accidents
this winter in New Jersey, said State Police Sgt. Jeff Flynn. There have been 428 accidents and 186 calls to help people who have
been in accidents in areas that the police are patrolling, he said
Sunday morning. There could be other accidents the department isn’t aware of yet. “So this isn’t even the whole picture,” Flynn told CNN. Even a salt truck slid and crashed into three cars East Orange, New Jersey, according to CNN affiliate News12. Flynn knows that no matter how much officials urge people to stay off
the roads, many will choose to drive or feel they have to drive. “If you have to be out,” Flynn said, “drive slower than you would in the snow.” The cold is also wracking other states this weekend. Winter storm
warnings are in effect through Monday morning for upstate Vermont and
portions of New Hampshire, Maine and western Massachusetts. In Vermont, there could be between 3 and 7 inches of snow and 10 inches in the state’s highest elevations.
EXPLOSIONS AND FIRES FROM THE PRODUCTION OF HONEY OIL FROM MARIHUANA PLANTS USING BUTANE
DENVER — When Colorado legalized marijuana two years ago, nobody was quite ready for the problem of exploding houses.
But
that is exactly what firefighters, courts and lawmakers across the
state are confronting these days: amateur marijuana alchemists who are
turning their kitchens and basements into “Breaking Bad”-style
laboratories, using flammable chemicals to extract potent drops of a
marijuana concentrate commonly called hash oil, and sometimes
accidentally blowing up their homes and lighting themselves on fire in
the process.
The
trend is not limited to Colorado — officials from Florida to Illinois
to California have reported similar problems — but the blasts are
creating a special headache
for lawmakers and courts here, the state at the center of legal
marijuana. Even as cities try to clamp down on homemade hash oil and
lawmakers consider outlawing it, some enthusiasts argue for their right
to make it safely without butane, and criminal defense lawyers say the
practice can no longer be considered a crime under the 2012 constitutional amendment that made marijuana legal to grow, smoke, process and sell.
“This
is uncharted territory,” said State Representative Mike Foote, a
Democrat from northern Colorado who is grappling with how to address
hash-oil explosions. “These things come up for the first time, and no
one’s dealt with them before.”
Over
the past year, a hash-oil explosion in a motel in Grand Junction sent
two people to a hospital. In Colorado Springs, an explosion in a
third-floor apartment shook the neighborhood and sprayed glass across a
parking lot. And in an accident in Denver, neighbors reported a “ball of
fire” that left three people hospitalized.
The
explosions occur as people pump butane fuel through a tube packed with
raw marijuana plants to draw out the psychoactive ingredient
tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, producing a golden, highly potent
concentrate that people sometimes call honey oil, earwax or shatter. The
process can fill a room with volatile butane vapors that can be ignited
by an errant spark or flame.
“They
get enough vapors inside the building and it goes off, and it’ll bulge
out the walls,” said Chuck Mathis, the fire marshal in Grand Junction,
where the Fire Department responded to four explosions last year. “They
always have a different story: ‘Nothing happened’ or ‘I was cooking
food, and all of a sudden there was an explosion.’ They always try to
blame it on something else.”
There were 32 such blasts across Colorado in 2014, up from 12 a year earlier, according to the Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area,
which coordinates federal and state drug enforcement efforts. No one
has been killed, but the fires have wrecked homes and injured dozens of
people, including 17 who received treatment for severe burns, including
skin grafts and surgery, at the University of Colorado Hospital’s burn
center.
The
legal complexities played out one snowy morning in a Denver courtroom
as a district judge puzzled over the case of Paul Mannaioni. Mr.
Mannaioni, 24, was charged with committing fourth-degree arson and
manufacturing marijuana after explosions ripped through a marijuana
cooperative in Denver that was filled with cannabis plants and littered
with boxes of butane, burners, pressure cookers, metal pipes and other
equipment commonly used in butane hash-oil extractions.
When
emergency responders showed up, they found Mr. Mannaioni and two other
people with severe burns “all over their arms and legs,” according to a
police affidavit. The police said that one of his companions, Danielle
Cordova, later told them that she did not know who had been
manufacturing the concentrate, but that the “hash bath” exploded when
the three stepped into a tent where it had been cooking.
To
prosecutors, a crime had taken place. Legalization may have given
licensed and regulated marijuana manufacturing facilities the ability to
extract hash oil legally in controlled environments, but officials say
dangerous, homemade operations using flammable butane — a fuel for
lighters, portable stoves or heaters — are still illegal.
Mr. Mannaioni’s lawyer, Robert Corry, a prominent marijuana advocate, had a different take. When Colorado’s voters passed Amendment 64 to
legalize marijuana for personal use and recreational sales, Mr. Corry
told the judge, they called for a fundamental shift in how Colorado
treated marijuana. It is no longer an issue for the police and courts,
he said, but for the regulators and bureaucrats who enforce the civil
codes surrounding marijuana growers and dispensaries.
“That
constitutional provision renders my client’s accused conduct to be
legal,” Mr. Corry said in court. “The court system is not to be used for
marijuana regulation anymore.”
He
compared making butane hash oil to processing olive oil, brewing beer
or distilling whiskey at home — riskier, perhaps, and vulnerable to
devastating results, but no longer a drug offense worth sending a young
man to prison, according to Mr. Corry. The state law being used to
prosecute Mr. Mannaioni, he said, was simply no longer valid.
“There
are thousands of people in Colorado who are doing this,” Mr. Corry said
in an interview. “I view this as the equivalent of frying turkey for
Thanksgiving. Someone spills the oil, and there’s an explosion. It’s
unfortunate, but it’s not a felony crime.”
Judge
A. Bruce Jones of the Second Judicial District was not buying the
argument, but he grappled with the holes in the law created by
legalizing marijuana. Is making hash oil “processing” marijuana — an
action that was deemed legal under Amendment 64 — or is it
“manufacturing”? What is the difference? How should the law view hash
oil? As marijuana concentrate, or as something else entirely? And how do
you produce it, exactly?
“I have no real knowledge of how you make hash oil,” Judge Jones said during the hearing.
Mr.
Mannaioni has pleaded not guilty and declined to discuss the details of
the explosion. He said he had worked jobs at dispensaries and helped to
build marijuana cultivations since he was 18, and that it felt surreal
to be prosecuted for a marijuana charge in a state that embraced
legalization, where hundreds of medical and recreational dispensaries
sell marijuana buds, edible treats and their own hash-oil concentrates.
“I
was blown away that they even charged us,” he said. “The court system,
they are having a really hard time of letting go that pot isn’t bad.”
And
so far, the legal system has not budged. The state attorney general has
weighed in to say legalization does not apply to butane extraction.
This month, a western Colorado judge overseeing the case against a
70-year-old man charged with making hash oil in his home rejected arguments that drug laws in Colorado were now unconstitutional.
In
the mountain town of Leadville, a landlord named Bill Korn spent a
month last spring cleaning up after one of his tenants blew apart the
kitchen trying to make hash oil in his 1880s home. The tenant pleaded
guilty to an arson charge and agreed to pay Mr. Korn $7,000 in damages, a
sentence Mr. Korn said felt “a little bit light.”
“They apparently don’t enforce any laws anymore,” he said.
WALLACE, W.Va. — Investigators with
the state Fire Marshal’s Office continued working Sunday to determine
the cause of the Saturday morning fire that killed one adult and two
children and left a woman seriously injured.
The survivor was being treated at West Penn Burn Center in Pittsburgh.
Emergency officials said the fire was reported around 1 a.m. in Wallace, located near the Wetzel County line.
Several fire departments from Harrison and Wetzel counties responded,
but slick road conditions slowed their efforts to reach the burning
home, which was located in a rural area near Trouser Leg Road.
Investigators have not released the names of the victims.
Two people dead after overnight fire in Hinton, West Virginia
Posted:
Jan 18, 2015 10:05 AM EST
Updated:
Jan 18, 2015 11:01 AM EST
By Jessica Schueler
House fire in Hinton Kills Two People
HINTON, WV -
A fatal house fire in Hinton claimed the lives of two people on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015. It happened at around 3:45 a.m.
on Tug Creek Connection Road.
Several area fire departments were
dispatched, as well as the Summers County Sheriff's Department. Deputies
said two people living in the home died. The West Virginia State Fire
Marshal's Office is investigating.
ICY ROAD CONDITIONS LEAD TO MANY ACCIDENTS
IN EAST DRUMORE, EARL TOWNSHIPS, PENNSYLVANIA’S LANCASTER COUNTY
Icy
conditions contributed to an accident along Route 372 near the Buck Sunday
morning.
Posted:
Sunday, January 18, 2015 10:00 am | Updated: 2:36 pm, Sun Jan 18, 2015.
Freezing
rain left icy roads that resulted in a number of accidents Sunday morning.
An
accident involving a car, a pickup truck, a minivan and a golf cart closed a
section of Route 372 near Buck.
The
accident in East Drumore Township happened around 8:40 a.m. when parts of the
road were icy, according to Jeff Neff, chief of the Quarryville Fire Company.
Neff
said the accident happened after a golf cart came down the road towards an
earlier accident in which a minivan had flipped over.
A
car coming up a hill behind the golf cart hit its brakes and then went into a
slide. Then, a pick-up truck following behind hit the car, sending it into a
pole, Neff said.
There
were no injuries and the road was reopened around 10 a.m.
In
Earl Township just after 9 a.m., a car flipped onto its roof along Weaverland
Road between Tower Road and Spruce Street.
The
road in the area was very icy and the vehicle flipped onto its hood in the area
of an embankment, according to Darryl Keiser, assistant chief of Garden Spot
Fire Rescue.
There
were only minor injuries.
The
two people inside the car were transported to Ephrata Community Hospital as a
precaution, Keiser said.
MIDDLETOWN, PENNSYLVANIA:
DRIVER CROSSED INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC TO PASS A VEHICLE AHEAD OF HER AND STRUCK
ANOTHER VEHICLE HEAD ON. THE DRIVER THAT CROSSED INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC DIED.
Posted:
Sunday, January 18,
2015 1:02 pm | Updated: 2:28 pm, Sun Jan 18, 2015.
By Christian Menno Staff writer
Police said the
three-vehicle crash on Bristol-Oxford Valley Road that left one woman dead and
another driver seriously injured Saturday night could have been caused by a
driver attempting to pass another car.
“Initially (it)
looks like one driver possibly crossed into oncoming traffic to pass a vehicle
ahead of her and struck another vehicle head on. The driver that crossed into
oncoming traffic died at (St. Mary Medical Center),” Middletown Police Chief
Joseph Bartorilla said Sunday.
He added that the
second driver suffered “serious injuries” and was transported to St. Mary
Medical Center. The third driver sustained minor injuries.
The official cause
of the crash is still under investigation.
