Revere firefighters battle second blaze in as many days

REVERE – A carelessly disposed cigarette started a fire Tuesday morning at 52 Rose St., damaging the apartment’s kitchen.The fire was the second in as many days with a blaze ignited by an unventilated dryer destroying the Squire Road Kentucky Fried Chicken Monday.”It was actually lint piled behind it that caught fire,” said Fire Chief Eugene Doherty.The 10:30 a.m. fire started in one of four units in a public housing building on Rose, a side street off Broadway. Doherty said firefighters confined the blaze to the kitchen and said no one was hurt.Monday’s fire caused $500,000 in damage and held up traffic on one of the city’s busiest roads. Accounts gathered by firefighters indicated a Kentucky Fried Chicken employee started the dryer Monday morning. A worker who entered the eatery before 9:30 a.m. smelled smoke, opened a door and, Doherty said, “the fire just took off.”Firefighters pulled back from the building before an air conditioning unit crashed through the roof, bringing down part of the ceiling. No customers were inside the building at the time of the fire and employees fled the building without injury.The Fire Department battled the back to back fires as it prepares to absorb spending cuts triggered by a drop in state revenue and corresponding reductions in state aid to the city.Doherty said four firefighters training to join the department will not start work and four to six firefighters on the force are likely to be laid off. Doherty said that reduction means a fire truck will probably be kept out of service until the city receives additional revenue.The cut represents an initial effort to cut municipal spending even as state and local officials, including Mayor Thomas Ambrosino, forecast spending problems into 2010. To meet that threat, Ambrosino is laying off 19 city workers throughout city offices and reducing the number of hours a week city offices are open.”This reality will require even more reductions in personnel and services than previously anticipated,” Ambrosino told City Council members last week before announcing his plan to reduce city health insurance costs by doubling premiums for 300 retired teachers.Saddling former and current municipal employees with more health costs is becoming a popular money saving measure. Cities and towns are girding for a push on Beacon Hill in support of a proposal that would enable them to circumvent labor unions and craft their own health plans, a tool they say would save millions of dollars amid a crushing recession.Termed “plan design,” the health cost cutting tool gives municipalities the power to unilaterally set co-payments and deductibles for their employees’ health plans, so long as the rates are no higher than those of the state’s Group Insurance Commission. Labor leaders oppose the change on the grounds that it would eliminate the voices of workers in negotiations.The Patrick administration has not embraced plan design as a cost-saving measure, saying cities and towns already have the ability to join the state’s health plan, which has the potential to save costs and keeps unions involved. Cities and towns must win 70 percent of their local unions’ approval to join the GIC, although Gov. Deval Patrick has proposed lowering the necessary approval to 50 percent. About two dozen municipalities have joined the GIC since they were encouraged to enter by a state law approved in 2007, including Saugus, Quincy, Pittsfield, Watertown and Weymouth.