Investigators probe cause of Revere fire

REVERE – City inspectors armed with marching orders from Mayor Thomas Ambrosino are moving quickly to tear down 60 Warren St., where a fire Sunday morning destroyed the vacant building’s second floor.”The mayor is drawing up the whole procedure for it starting with a board of survey review,” said Municipal Inspection Director Nicholas Catinazzo.Local fire investigators, aided by the state Fire Marshal’s office are investigating the cause of the two-alarm fire. Firefighters assigned to Engines 1, 4 and 5 and Ladder 2 responded to a 1:23 a.m. emergency call from a neighbor.”The fire was already out the roof when we got the call,” said Fire Inspector Jay Mazzola.Deputy Fire Chief Christopher Bright struck a second alarm and called in crews from Boston, Chelsea and Malden at 1:33 a.m. Firefighters worked through 6 a.m. making sure the fire was extinguished.The two-and-a-half-story wood frame house has been a sore spot for neighbors and city officials since May 11, 2004 when former resident Albert Hovasse was killed after a welding torch he was using to repair pipes in the house started a fire.City inspectors ordered the house boarded up, but Municipal Inspections Director Nicholas Catinazzo said the property turned into a party spot for kids and a trash-strewn nuisance.”We got a lot of complaints about kids breaking in and overgrown weeds. We had it cleaned and boarded up. I think we even hired someone to do a cleanup at the site,” Catinazzo said.He said inspectors sent several letters to owner Gloria Avila of Randolph and fined her after inspections determined 60 Warren was in violation of municipal ordinances governing property maintenance. Catinazzo said the most recent letter to Avila was written on May 8.”Evidently nothing was done. Kids tore off all the boarding and were in there doing drugs,” he said.Mazzola said inspectors were told workers were in the house doing renovation work last weekend.The Sunday fire burned out the top floor of the house and a board-up crew secured the ground floor. Catinazzo said the city will move quickly to demolish the building under a recently approved city ordinance designed to accelerate renovations or, if necessary, demolitions of vacant buildings.He said the mounting wave of home foreclosures has elevated concerns about homes becoming vacant nuisances.”We try to stay on top of it,” he said.