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Fire on 27th Street
03/05/2012 7:37 AM by John M
Firefighters are in the 400 block of 27th Street in Richmond, Virginia right now fighting a house fire.
Neighbors told CBS 6 reporter Jerrita Patterson that two people who lived in the house are safe.
It is unknown whether anyone was inside the home when the fire started.
Thanks to Jonathan for the photo.
The woman whose house caught fire had a dog who ran away because of this. Can everyone keep an eye out for a brown and black medium sized dog named Bradley.
We live around the corner and will keep an eye out for him. I will tell our immediate neighbors. So glad to here the family in the purple house is safe! Any news on the 2 brothers that live in the other house?
Thankfully everyone made it out safely
Oh my god. Just moved out of 409 about a block away. Going out in an hour to look for Bradley. We will find him!
We know the woman but the fire started in her neighbor’s house which is adjoined. Suspect a space heater that burned through the wall (no fire wall in these old houses) and spread to the roof. The elderly brothers who are deaf and mute were evacuated by the woman who’s smoke detector woke her up. The brothers had no telephone or way to alert an emergency.
The firemen said the second floors of both houses are a total loss and extreme water damage to her first floor but more damage in the brother’s house. This started a little after 5:00 this morning and when I left for work around 8:00 firefighters were still there.
She lost all of her clothes and everything on the second floor… the houses are condemned. Red Cross is helping but she has no family in the area, the brothers do.
Bradly – her dog, came back but they can’t sem to catch him so please keep an eye out but be cautious because he is not a friendly dog.
Eric, please let us know how we can help. Is there a way to find out (and provide) what she needs?
so very sorry this happened. Those brothers had lived there a long time, I feel very bad for them, as I don’t know much about their broader support network. They are very gentle souls. Doesn’t that woman Nan live in the purple house? Or are there new owners?
Clay Street, yes… the brothers are Jessie and Lee and they have an aunt named Lucy who is supposed to be a caretaker (don’t even let me get started on that abuse). Nan Tankard does live next door in the attached purple section. That is the woman I am talking about. She is disabled herself and she was able to get the brothers out who was trying to go back upstairs when it was engulfed in flames. I would call her some sort of hero!
Thanks Chelsea… you can always contact me and I also have a Facebook account you can contact me through there. At this point things are pretty fluid about what is to come. – Eric Huffstutler
News sources are incorrectly saying either no one was home, no one was in the house when fire broke out, or only two people were displaced.
All three were home when the fire was under way. Nan was alerted by a smoke detector when fire was breaking through to her bedroom closet and went next door to help the brothers out of their house. All three have been displaced (homeless).
Eric, please post what we can do to help, thanks. I heard the sirens this morning, the noise woke me up, and now I know how close it was (I’m over on Broad near 26th.) I’m not sure if a donation to the Red Cross would be directed to them, so if there is something else we can do please suggest, thanks.
So, so sad. Please keep CHPN in the loop on how we can help.
I will keep people posted when I hear anything… thank you for you kind offers!
All I know is that Red Cross have put Nan up in a motel that accepts pets and the last we saw of her she was going out to look for Bradley. As far as I know she found him but not certain.
I also learned late yesterday that her house is in foreclosure. Was listed in Style weekly to have been sold February 17th but the sale was postponed to a later date. That means if the bank is making the house insurance payments the contents lost will not be covered.
I am not sure what will happen to the brothers. Their caretaker has been reported to the state over and over but nothing was ever done. Someone is supposed to be living with them and the aunt has lied repeated times she was and/or visits 3 times a week and that is more likely once a month to take their check and spend it leaving them with bare minimums. I wish I knew what happened to them and fear they will become wards of the state. They are gentle souls who are always friendly.
There was a man in the channel 6 video who said he took the brothers in, but I don’t know what happened after that.
Eric, thanks so much for your updates. I remember seeing that the house was in foreclosure. If the sale was postponed, it probably means that the bank does not own it, but that doesn’t mean she had insurance on the contents, either. So do let us know if there is anything we can do such as donate household things for any of the three people.
That’s really sad. That guy was probably the first personality of the neighborhood I can remember meeting. He would always smile and wave when we walked the dogs. Hope he ends up in a good place once it all settles out.
Eric, it sounds like you haven’t been able to talk to Nan or to the brothers? Do you think it would be possible to call the Red Cross to see if there is a way for us to directly help?
I happened to be off work today and Nan was at her house with a claims adjuster and the Fire Dept had some trainees there looking the buildings over.
Nan is still at the motel through her insurance company. The brother’s house where the fire started did NOT have insurance on it. They had some sort of city assistance insurance on them but not the house so Nan’s insurance people are going after the neglectant caretaker who continues to lie about her status. No need to lie because anyone living on this block for any length of time can see when she is and isn’t there. A recent abuse situation recently was when the aunt caretaker was talking to someone and Lee tugged on her coat to get her attention, she turned around and slapped him and he rushed into the house crying. So sad! Nan went to social services since the fire and made a complaint in person that over the years she has tried to get the brothers out of that abusive and unsupervised situation but they wouldn’t take action and now they burned their house down. The brothers Jesse and Lee are in some sort of half-way house for disabled people right now.
Nan is still shaken up but the insurance agent mentioned something about the brother’s house being torn down while they try to save hers since the duplex is on the historic registry and the extent of her damage is partial upstairs, the entire roof, and water and smoke damage.
Otherwise she is fine and have all of her pets with her. She was given money for clothes by the Red Cross but can’t focus on buying anything.
That is all I know right now.
Eric
Chelsea, The Red Cross may be out of it at this point since they have limited funds and usually only help for a couple of days until something else can be done by family or insurance. Not sure how to help the brother’s at this point but know Nan Tankard is staying at DoubleTree on Franklin and possibly they can foreward any cards or else to her?
First, I want to head this off and express my concern that some may have interpreted the post about foreclosure as possibly being arson? That is totally ridiculous! The fire put several people’s life at risk and loss of property as well as disrupting their lives. The foreclosure information is public notice, has been in the newspaper, Style Weekly, and even on a foreclosure list post on CHPN. If anything it was an accident that could have been totally preventable if a at home caretaker / supervisor was living with the brothers as there should have been one. This is a very sad situation and I knew someone would try to put the foreclosure and fire together some way, which was not anyone’s intension.
Cleanup crews were at Nan’s house this morning (smoke – water damage) but didn’t see any moving vans for her heavy antiques? I haven’t seen anything else going on with the brothers house and I have been trying to catch George Bey whos family I think is somehow related, to get their status.
Will keep everyone posted as the future of this duplex is still up in the air.
Looks like Walker & Frick Construction may be doing the purple 413 house. They have been registered with the BBB since 1990 and have an A+ rating so this sounds hopeful. I am in contact with them and report what I find.
Can someone tell me what is going on here?
I understand from Nan that the very next day after the fire, the city cited here with several code violations. WHAT !?!? The house just burned. She lost her home and possessions. She is in a state of shock and the city has the audacity to cite her immediately after the fire!
Not only that, they are now citing her for house abandonment. The building was condemned by the city. Insurance is still working on what to do.
What is going on with the city… have they gone crazy? Are they that insensitive and also have no conception of time? Are they in a hurry to tear down historic and fill it with some new crappy designed house?
If this harassment keeps going on she and her insurance company will sue the city or whomever started this.
Am very sorry that she is having trouble, but maybe Nan should have sold some of her heavy antiques to pay her mortgage…if she hasn’t been paying her mortgage then she probably wasn’t paying the escrow that included her homeowner’s insurance. Some of the issues you listed above are fallout from that. Actions have consequences.
She has homeowner’s insurance, the same people we have. They also came to pick up her posessions to clean and refurbish them. The men on the other side didn’t and the insurance company can’t move to start fixing the house until the caretaker for the men decides what they are going to do with their half of the duplex.
What part are you saying represents her situation? Why would they cite a house for violations not 24-hours later?
Latest on the 413-415 N 27th Street duplex is that Walker & Frick has started gutting Nan’s house out while the brother’s house, not having insurance, is now up for sale “as-is” for $90k. The contractor told Nan she will be out of the house for at least 9-months. In the mean time she is living in a house set up by her insurance in the West End.
This is an awkward situation since there will be two different contractors doing work yet we want to make sure that both are done correctly per C.A.R. guidellines and back to the original 1903 era style facades. The duplex was mirror images like all were when built.
Eric
Well, I heard from my cousin’s boyfriend’s mama’s hairdresser, that the whole lot was going up for short sale and that Lee Jordan is interested in turning it into living history museum with chickens ponies and unicorns…
Update… Construction is at a standstill on Nan’s section (413) due to the fact that power of attorney to the owner of the property will not give access to contractors to their half of the duplex. Next move is gain legal access to the property to sure up walls and if that doesn’t work, a lien on properties. Right now it is simply blight and have noticed rodents taking over as the half where the fire started still hasn’t been cleaned out.
Update… Nan’s half at 413 continues to be restored. the roof was made “separate” in preparation of the other half where the fire started, 415… to be demolished. It was on the market and sold Monday (don’t know price yet) to Peter Megyeri of Historic Richmond Renovations LLC. Why are all “owners” now registering as a LLC?
They started cleaning out the house yesterday and looking forward to a PROPER restoration and them getting rid of that horrid plastic siding put there in 1968.
Has anyone heard of these people or seen their work?
Eric
FYI
415 sold for $59.5k rather than the asking $90k.
Real Estate listings mentioned having to put about $250,000 into it to restore.
@All Bark, your post is so funny and it is amazing how some people have time to keep up with so much information. @Eric, are you a reporter? However, if it were not for people being so inquisitive we would know so much less about our hood sorry meant neighborhood. 🙂
If Nan’s house is part of a duplex then there are many duplexes on the 400 block. Oh no sorry, it’s not actually Nan’s house that is part of a duplex it is the house you live in.
See ‘All Bark’ it is a good thing you do not depend on me to keep up with everything happening on the hill. It is easy to see in reading my post; I forgot the house where Eric lives is part of a duplex because it was made into a duplex over one hundred years ago.
Many people who do not live in detached houses prefer the term semi-detached or row house. Either Eric does not know the meaning of a real duplex or he is trying to act as if 413 & 415 are not as nice as the house he lives in. Is it because Nan’s house wasn’t built in the early 18oo’s or could it be because the house that’s semidetached from it has its own whole number address instead of 407 ½?
Being certain Eric knows this is all in fun, and not meant to insult him in anyway. It is grand he is willing to do all the work necessary to keep us all informed. Let me be the first to post a great big ‘THANK YOU’ to Eric. ?
“A duplex house is defined as a dwelling having apartments with separate entrances for two families. This includes two-story houses having a complete apartment on each floor and side-by-side apartments on a single lot that share a common wall.[1] By contrast, a building comprising two attached units on two distinct properties is typically considered semi-detached or twin homes.”
“The term “duplex” can also be extended to three-unit and four-unit buildings, or they can be referred to with specific terms such as triplex and four-plex or quadplex/quadruplex, [2] with triple Decker being a common name for the three-story variant in the Boston area. Because of the flexibility of the term, the line between an apartment building and a duplex is somewhat blurred, with apartment buildings tending to be bigger, while duplexes are usually the size of a normal house.”
“ Semi-detached housing (often abbreviated to semi in the UK, Canada, and Australia, as in “three-bedroom semi”, and occasionally referred to as se-tenant houses) consists of pairs of houses built side by side as units sharing a party wall and usually in such a way that each house’s layout is a mirror image of its twin. The style is usually referred to in the mid-Atlantic (particularly Philadelphia) as a twin.
This type of housing can be thought of as being a halfway state between terraced or row houses and single-family detached houses. Terraced housing is constituted by continuous row houses with open spaces at the front and back, while semi-detached houses have front, rear and any one side open spaces, and individual detached houses have open spaces on all sides.”
Amused, I am not insulted in any way, thanks for the history lesson. I guess the term duplex is loosely used when we think of two residents sharing a common wall as with 413-415. And the term semi-detached is not a known here in the states as is in the UK.
I am just surprised that anyone is still reading this at all.
Nan’s house “should” be ready for occupancy by the end of November but she is currently having contractor issues. The person who bought 415 is on a roll and is going to make sure that his side mirrors the other half’s 1903 era facade and rebuild the long porch as well on both sides so it matches.
Eric
Nan this is Louise.my address is 1124 Schloss rd.i miss and love you always.im tore up over your trouble.can I help in ANY WAY?$ a place to stay.I have a extra room and all pet are well me.no rent. Please get in touch874 -2926.PLEASE PLEASE CALL .YOUVE ALWAYS BEEN MY HERO!
This is an old and long post so hope some will see it but wanted to let people know that we lost Nan Tankard on October 8th. She lived at 413 N 27th. There is no local service and a private one pending in Cape Charles, VA. Here is her obituary link:
http://www.doughtyfuneralhome.com/sitemaker/sites/Dought1/obit.cgi?user=55733930_NTankard