MANCHESTER, NH – About 4:15 a.m. on Sept. 29, fire sprinklers went off on the fifth floor of the Henry J. Pariseau apartment building at 55 Amory St.
Water poured out into the hallway and into other apartments and down to floors below, taking down ceilings, damaging personal property and shutting down the two main elevators, isolating disabled residents on the upper floors.
As described by Terry O’Leary, who lives on the fourth floor, she is one of the fortunate ones with no damage.
Manchester Fire Chief Ryan Cashin confirmed the call, saying a sprinkler pipe broke above the fifth-floor ceiling.
“It wasn’t a malicious break,” Cashin said. “Sprinklers save lives but they do break now and then. In this case, he said, fire companies responded quickly, shut down the sprinklers and cleaned up.
“Manchester Housing notified us and we were on the scene in a few minutes, with the sprinkler back up and running in a short time. It does let off a lot of water, but Manchester Housing was there and has always been really responsive to issues in their buildings,” Cashin said.
In the moment, however, a “good bit of water,” did flow down to the other floors and caused damage, he said.
O’Leary, 65, said it is the third time in a few years that sprinklers have caused damage to other residents’ apartments. The first time, she said, a resident on the eighth floor fell asleep. The food he had left on the stove burned, started a fire and set off the sprinklers. Water poured down from the eighth floor to the first floor, causing water damage to apartments below.
The next incident, she said, was about two years ago. A man on the sixth floor allegedly took a baseball bat to a water pipe, causing a deluge to damage apartments on that floor and those below, according to O’Leary.
Last Sunday’s incident knocked out power to both elevators. Power was restored to one elevator Monday afternoon.
That didn’t’ help Marion Lajoie, 74, who lives on the ninth floor and requires oxygen. She said she can’t use the stairs but on Sunday, not being able to go outside, caused her to suffer an anxiety attack.
Firefighters climbed nine flights of stairs to reach her and carried her back down in a lift chair. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital, she said.
She was treated, released and returned to her building Monday morning to find the elevators still not working. With her oxygen tank in tow, she climbed the nine flights.
Asked Monday night if she was exhausted after the hike, Lajoie, leaning against a wall, said, “Do I look tired? Yeah.” She then got into the one working elevator to head up to her apartment and a good night’s sleep.
Nancy Abbott, 61, has lived in the building for four years and said this is the second-time her apartment has flooded because of sprinkler activations. Her apartment was renovated as a result.
She lives on the fourth floor where early Sunday morning water poured down into her apartment, taking down ceiling panels. Some fell on top of her wax burner (residents aren’t allowed to burn candles so Abbott uses the wax burner to scent her apartment). The ceiling panels broke the wax burner, sending shattered glass and hot wax across her living area. Water poured down onto clothes in her closet.
She and her long-haired chihuahua, named Reba McEntire, sought refuge in her bathroom as water about 3 ½ inches deep filled her apartment. A water mark stained the bathroom door.
“I had water over my feet,” she said. “I was in full meltdown.” She said with many electronics plugged in she was “afraid I was going to get electrocuted.”
The water damaged her cable box, so she has no TV.
“We need help. I have no where to go,” she said. Maintenance crews cleared out the water and left driers behind.
Some of her furniture, towels and other property were destroyed, however. She doesn’t have rental insurance and management has told her that her lease requires it, and that they are not responsible for replacing her damaged property.
She lives on about $1,100 in Social Security and, while her apartment is subsidized, food costs and medical co-pays eat up most of her income.
Having insurance may sound like a logical precaution, however, one former tenant says it cost him much more than the monthly premium, in the end.
Jason Bottari, who lived on the sixth floor until last year, said he paid $15 a month for rental insurance so his property was covered when it was damaged during a water pipe break last year.
He filed a claim and stayed in a motel for a week while the damage was repaired. Then, the insurance company raised his rate to $500 a month, in essence canceling his policy by making it so expensive.
Bottari said the insurance agent told him his apartment was “way too high of a cost to insure. She said I might as well be living in a building with a rooftop pool filled with fire.”
The Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority moved him to a unit in one of their scattered housing properties, residences the authority sublets from private owners.
O’Leary, Lajoie and Abbott say they blame Mayor Jay Ruais and Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority for their predicament. They said they suspect that because of his policies to get the homeless off the streets and out of the parks, that they think they are being placed at the city-operated building, occupied mostly by the elderly and disabled.
“This is ridiculous,” said Lajoie, who for years worked as a local bartender and nurse’s aide. “We don’t deserve this. Take the YDC and put them in there. Nobody’s using it.”
O’Leary agreed. She said some of the homeless people being placed in the building have friends come and stay with them who are not on the lease and not paying rent.
And some, she said, continue to use drugs. She showed a reporter a video of one man on the floor in a hallway “tripping out.” A resident said another woman was seen defecating in a basket in the laundry room.
“Thanks, Mayor Ruais,” said O’Leary.
When reached for comment for this story the mayor’s office disputes the claim that the have placed people from the streets at the complex, and provided the following statement:
“The City of Manchester has not placed any unhoused individuals in the Pariseau Building. Since January, the Mayor has implemented 14 different initiatives to address homelessness in a comprehensive fashion. Fortunately, these policies are bearing fruit. In the last three months alone, we have found housing for 20 individuals through the engagement center, and in the 10 days since the launch of his initiative to effectively end veterans homelessness, four homeless veterans have found permanent housing,” said Carole Alfano, communications director for the mayor.
The women interviewed for this story remain skeptical. O’Leary said the resident of the apartment where the sprinkler system failed, flooding the building on Sunday, had only moved into the building this past summer. She said Security escorted him out of the building, but residents are unsure if he was evicted.
Manchester Ink Link reached out to Catherine Naczas, the executive director of the Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority, for more information about the extent of the damage and to ask about the residents’ perception that new tenants are being relocated by the city from the streets, but after several inquiries made last week, we have had no response.