what makes a person live underground?

While it is generally accepted that some homeless people in large cities do indeed make use of accessible, abandoned underground structures for shelter, it is always amazing to me when I fnd such a person here in Manchester.
Found a woman who is living under ground today. It is an old location that I won't disclose. Many years ago I knew a man who lived there. I thought the place was empty but it was on my walk-about today.
I looked into the hole and heard her as she scramled out of view. She was huddled back into the corner like a cornered animal. I Made apology and gave her a bag of sandwiches and said I would check on her every week.
I will continue to enage her. Bring candles, food, balnkets, maybe sterno for heat.
People living underground isnt something the average person thinks of especially when Manchester is promoted as such a wonderful place to live. When I find those who clamour down into the dark away from the city problems: away from shelters and cops I find troubled, endearing people with a humbling ability to survive, to set up a home ( like any middle class person) Thier needs are so basic. Shelter, safety.

It is sad- and motivates me to keep going. Keep engaging these folk so they dont slip away from the world into the unknown. If not me, then who?

Ravens

They travel singularly or in pairs,
not likely to have friends or family to help.
They nest in the woods or even abandoned buildings.
When storms knock out their nest they
return to rebuild.
They are successful insofar as they can procure resources from the environment
and convert them for use.
They must maintain a constant internal environment and avoid becoming a
resource for others.
Late fall the colorful leaves now on the ground.
The migrant birds have left.
The woods quiet except the punctuated
calls of crows and croaks of ravens
here and there as they flap determinately towards some unknown destination.
They remain North in summer and winter going about their dubious affairs
regardless of the heat or bitter cold.
And they are everywhere; they are successful as they continue to live,
even as they are convenient scapegoats
for crop failures and the spread of disease
and are relentlessly persecuted as vermin.

Cindy C. Copyright- Under The Bridge Stories and Poems by Manchester's Homeless
ISBN 0-9707247-0-5

Anatomy of a bridge fire HippoPress

The series of events that converged on April 12 created a potentially deadly crisis. City officials reacted to the fire as a citywide disaster, and it very nearly was.

By Dan J. Szczesny
Photos by Neil Lovett
HippoPress.com

When Manchester Fire Department pump operator Roland Roberge jumped out of Engine No. 6, the fire was eating its way east toward the highway. It had to be stopped. Roberge had to find a hydrant fast. Engine No. 6 only carries about five minutes of water supply, and it was being drained quickly to fight the growing fire. That five minute head start wasn’t nearly enough. After a few moments of trying to open a nearby hydrant, Roberge realized it was rusted shut. The hunt was on for another hydrant, but not before the truck ran out of water, and the fire moved out overo Interstate 293.

At about the same time, Dino and Rose were coming home from an afternoon of sunbathing by the Piscataquog River. Dino and Rose lived under the bridge in a makeshift apartment built out of wood pallets and carpeting. They saw the smoke from McGregor Street as they walked home. A cop directed them away from the fire, and Dino and Rose weren’t about to tell him that it appeared it was their home that was on fire. Afraid, they walked away to find someone who could help.
Meanwhile, city Emergency Management Director Chief Joseph Kane was beginning to understand the scope of the problem. It wasn’t the bridge that was on fire-it was the cables underneath that provided communication to most of the West Side, including Catholic Medical Center. Within minutes of the start of the fire, thousands of residents from as far away as Pinardville and Goffstown had no 911 service. Kane ordered the city’s Emergency Operation Center to be opened. Minutes later all the city’s department heads were on their way to Central Fire Station on Merrimack Street.


The fire spreads west over the river


On Friday, April 12 a fast moving fire that started under the west side of the Bridge Street Bridge consumed nearly $500,000 worth of telephone and television cables strung under the bridge. Reports in the aftermath of the fire blamed the homeless people who lived there. But the causes of the fire, and the reasons it spread and created such damage, are far more complex.
A series of events that included faulty fire hydrants, the initial construction of the bridge which put fiberglass-wrapped conduits within arm’s reach and the city’s growing homeless population created a potentially lethal situation. City officials reacted to the fire as a citywide disaster, and it very nearly was.

For the first time, through a series of interviews with everyone involved, HippoPress offers an anatomy of the fire-why it was more serious than reported, why a fairly harmless brush fire got so out of control, and what can be done to prevent another disaster from taking place.

April 12, 4:00 p.m.

Verizon president Mike Hickey was in a conference on the 19th floor of the City Hall Plaza building when someone pointed out the window and said there was a fire on the Bridge Street Bridge. Like most people there that afternoon, he initially thought a car on the bridge was on fire. After all, bridges don’t burn.

But when reports of service interruptions on the West Side began coming in, Hickey and Verizon officials quickly understood that Verizon phone lines along the bridge were going up in flames.

Along with two AT&T cables, there were five major copper cables and two fiber cables owned by Verizon under the bridge. The five copper cables contained 10,300 pairs of service wires. Each pair delivered service to one residence on the West Side, Pinardville and Goffstown. Some of the fiber cables delivered service to customers as far away as Weare and New Boston.

The cable conduits were designed when the bridge was built in 1988-89. The engineers who designed the conduits and the cross-frames that held them chose to encase the cables in fiberglass. They were concerned that enclosing the cables in metal or concrete would be too heavy a load for such a wide span-about 800 feet. Plus, fiberglass allowed for expansion and contraction in different types of weather.

That fiberglass was now melting away and firefighters would soon have to fight the fire while being showered by flaming fiberglass powder as the fire sheared it off the cables in a series of tiny explosions.

“Get me the mayor,” Hickey said, watching the smoke and flames grow.

4:10 p.m.

The first fire team to respond was Engine No. 6 from the Amory Street fire station. The engine company was responding to a report of a brush fire spotted on the embankment of the Bridge Street Bridge, just above Interstate 293. At that time on a weekday, about 11,500 cars an hour whiz by on the interstate, and traffic on the bridge is usually backed up at the Bridge and McGregor streets intersection.

The engine team first decided to approach the fire on a small access road next to the interstate at the bottom of the embankment, but soon realized they couldn’t get close enough, and that the fire was more under the bridge than next to it.

Engine No. 6 came back around and parked in the northeast parking lot behind 195 McGregor St. By this point, a heavy northern wind had picked up and cars were driving through near-blinding smoke on both Bridge Street and the interstate.

The engine carries about 750 gallons of water and pumps about 150 to 200 gallons of water a minute. While firefighters hopped the rail and headed down the embankment to begin attacking the fire, pump operator Roland Roberge was left with the task of finding his colleagues a steady water supply.

District Chief James Burkush and other reinforcements were on their way, called in when firefighters realized that cables under the bridge were being threatened. For the moment, no one knew what those cables were-if they were electrical or gas, the firefighters themselves could be in danger.
Manchester and state police were called, but not on the scene yet. Roberge dragged his line to an old fire hydrant only 50 yards from the fire, but couldn’t get the hydrant open. In Manchester nearly 500 of the city’s 3,500 hydrants are on private property and, supposedly, inspected and kept up by property owners. Not this one. Age and rust had sealed it shut. Roberge headed back as Engine No. 6 ran out of water.4:15 p.m.

It had been a good day for Dino and Rose. They had spent the afternoon hanging out down by the old trestle near the Kelley Street Bridge. It was a warm day. They were dressed casually-jeans, T-shirts and Dino with his favorite baseball cap. Dino and Rose do not look homeless, despite the fact that Dino has lived under the Bridge Street Bridge off and on for about six years.

Two couples lived there, in a shanty complex made of wood pallets, carpeting and bricks. They didn’t know it at the time, but Dino and Rose’s apartment was on fire. Later, on the 11 p.m. news, officials speculated that the people living under the bridge caused the fire. But Dino and Rose insist that they weren’t home, and wrote a statement saying as much to the police with the help of local homeless activist Cindy Carlson.

Later, one news report floated the possibility that kids lit Dino and Rose’s stuff on fire, but police still have little idea how the fire started. What is clear is that it completely destroyed everything Dino and Rose owned.

By the time the two got back to the bridge, an officer was directing traffic at the Bridge and McGregor street intersection and wouldn’t let them by. Not willing to say anything yet, Dino and Rose walked away, eventually reaching Carlson’s apartment.

“I think our house is on fire,” Dino said when Carlson answered the door.4:20 p.m.

Chief Burkush got lucky. It was the first good thing that happened since the fire started. One of his firefighters, Lt. Bob Beaudet, worked on the construction crew that built the Bridge Street Bridge in 1988. Beaudet was able to tell Burkush that the cables under the bridge were for communications only and not a danger to firefighters.

But Burkush needed more good news. State police were not yet on the scene and the fire was now moving over the bridge. Burkush sent another engine crew down onto the interstate from Eddy Road near the Coca-Cola plant. The interstate had to be closed, as flaming cable was now beginning to blow down onto the road.

Capt. Mike Gamache rolled his engine truck down Eddy Road and out onto the interstate, praying the oncoming cars would pay attention to the giant fire truck, sirens blaring, coming toward them and stop. In a dangerous maneuver most firefighters would rather not attempt, he angled his engine across the road bringing Friday afternoon’s rush hour traffic to a screeching halt even as a few final drivers squeaked by under falling, flaming debris.

Meanwhile, the firefighters were beginning to get some things under control. Traffic on the bridge had finally been stopped, and Burkush was able to begin running a line across the street to a city-maintained hydrant near the intersection. Below the bridge, Gamache’s pump man clamped his hose onto a hydrant down by the interstate and opened her up.

It was another private hydrant, and the water supply lasted less than 10 minutes before the hydrant’s threads ripped away under the pressure and rendered it useless.

Burning conduits were now exploding and flaming fiberglass was coming down around Burkush’s men. He had managed to get the third hydrant set up, but it was too late. The fire had jumped the interstate and was now moving across the bridge over the river. Burkush called for more help. To stop the fire they were going to have to make a stand on the east side of the bridge. There was nothing they could do except wait for the fire to come to them.

4:30 p.m.

Even as the fire raged, Hickey and his crew were trying to get help to customers. Replacement cable-8,000 feet of it-was ordered from Massachusetts and New York. It would arrive that evening.

While Verizon work crews headed to the scene, another group of technicians began bringing cell phones to strategic locations around the West Side, which had been without 911 service for half an hour. Over 20 cell phones were brought to Catholic Medical Center. Through the Verizon Wireless phone store on South Willow Street, another 100 phones were distributed to emergency phone stations being set up around the West Side, including at Kings Bowling Alley, Northwest Elementary School and St. Mary’s Bank.

Hickey had already reached Mayor Bob Baines, who was eating dinner at Pappy’s Pizza on Elm Street. Because he did not have his city cell phone with him, Baines didn’t realize that Chief Kane had been trying to track him down. Hickey reached the mayor on his private cell phone and told him what he knew about the fire. Later, around 6:30 p.m., the mayor arrived home to discover several messages on his machine, informing him that the city was in a state of emergency and to get to Central Fire Station.

5:00 p.m.

Hundreds of spectators had assembled in Arms Park to watch, and now the fire was coming toward them. A police detail began roping off the area under the bridge on the east side as the fire crept over the water.

Burkush called fire crews from Goffstown, Bedford and Merrimack to Manchester’s West Side to cover the city’s fire stations. A group of firefighters set up a powerful water cannon called a “master stream” on the ground, and pumped 800 gallons a minute against the flames. Soon a second truck joined in. It was the firefighter’s last real chance to stop the flames before the cables burned up to the Wall Street Towers parking lot, or to the towers themselves.

The “master stream” seemed to do the trick, and the fire was under control an hour after it had started. The next step was up to city and Verizon officials, who stood at the scene watching the ragged web of communication cables fall into the river.

5:30 p.m.

Emergency Management Director Chief Joseph Kane had just come off his regular shift and was on his way to his daughter’s school recital when he got the call to come back to the station.

For the past hour he had monitored the progress of his men fighting the fire. Normally, the mayor would call for the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to be opened, but Kane made the decision himself this time. He would, at least, start preparations while city officials were tracking down the mayor.

His decision to open the center was based on one thing: communications. Thousands of residents and businesses were now without phone lines, and that meant they were without 911 services. And Kane had no idea how widespread the problem was.

The police department had already sent extra patrol cars out to the West Side in the hope that if anyone needed help, a patrol car would not be difficult to flag down.

The city’s EOC is made up of three rooms on the second floor of the Central Fire Station at 100 Merrimack St. The first room is a conference center, with large leather chairs around an oak table. Within a half hour of opening the EOC, the chief of police and fire, health and traffic department directors, superintendent of schools, chairman of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, and the mayor would be gathered around that table.

Each would have a nameplate, and each would open a package of updates and instructions pertaining to the emergency. In this case, Kane was also going to bring in Verizon officials.

Along with the conference room known as the “think tank,” the city’s EOC includes an operations room. Above the ceiling panels, electrical and phone connections drop down to desks set up for Red Cross, police and fire dispatch, and other state officials. The operations room also has ham radio facilities.
The third room in the EOC is for media briefings and press conferences.

The last time the EOC was opened was the morning of the September 11 attacks. By 6 p.m. on April 12 the EOC was open and city officials began showing up. By 7 p.m. the mayor had arrived. Kane locked the doors and got down to business.

It was decided that temporary service needed to be connected immediately. By Saturday morning, 19 splicers and a six-person line crew were on the bridge laying down temporary cables-100,000 wire splices were needed to get service back up by Monday.

Kane was the last to leave the EOC at 1 a.m., though the center remained operational until the next day.

11:00 p.m.

At Cindy Carlson’s apartment, Dino and Rose found out that they were thought to be the cause of the fire. It was first reported on the nightly news that two homeless people had argued and somehow started the fire. Later, that report was amended to vandals. But Carlson encouraged the two to write down a statement about where they were that afternoon. They wrote a one-page statement detailing their activities, which Carlson took to police.

The next day, Dino was allowed to go down to his former home under the bridge to collect some of his and Rose’s belongings, but there was nothing left to salvage. Besides the clothes and mattresses-a bed Dino insists kept him warm in weather as cold as minus 40 degrees-the two lost personal papers and gifts they bought for each other.

The police interviewed the two, but no arrests have been made since the fire and the investigation remains active.

...and after

Since the fire, Dino and Rose have stayed with friends while they figure out what to do. Both say that they don’t panhandle, and they are outside by choice.

“Shelters make me claustrophobic,” says Dino. “I’m not too comfortable being around a lot of people.”

Both say they are clean of drugs but not alcohol. Rose also says that they are going to open a bank account-they both have jobs-and plan to start saving money for their own apartment.

The reports that the fire was caused by homeless people have had repercussions. Manchester community police unit Sgt. Mike DiSabato says that several property owners in the Millyard and other locations around the city have called complaining about homeless camps set up on their property. As a result, police have stepped up patrols of these makeshift homes, moving people off private property.“Naturally, if someone calls, we ask the homeless folks to remove their camps,” DiSabato says. “If they come back, we’ll arrest them or fine them. That doesn’t solve the problem though.”

The bridge fire in Manchester also inspired a homeless sweep in Covington, Ky., according to a news story in the Cincinnati Post.
At the city level, one update to the EOC that came out of the fire was better communication between city leaders and Manchester Community Television. Since the fire happened after work, no one at the EOC was able to access and operate the MCTV equipment to broadcast messages. Since the fire, several city department heads have been trained to operate MCTV from City Hall.

Verizon Wireless engineer Phillip Marineau said that once permanent repairs begin on the bridge, the company is considering preventing similar fires by running the lines on steel plating 30 feet out from where the bridge makes contact with the embankment. This would prevent anyone from tampering with exposed cables.

Like the faulty hydrants in the area near the bridge, one of every seven fire hydrants around the city is on private property. But oftentimes, it’s only when the fire department attempts to use a hydrant that they discover it doesn’t work. There is little the city can do about faulty hydrants on private property except fine property owners.

Finally, HTA Consulting Engineers of Manchester has made a preliminary assessment of fire damage to the Bridge Street Bridge, putting the cost at about $1.1 million, which includes fixing damage to the bridge’s concrete deck, minor damage to the bridge’s utility support beams and two girders, and major paint damage. The consulting firm recommends keeping the right lane and sidewalk barricaded in order to make a full evaluation of the structural integrity of the steel and of the steel components in the utility bays that burned.

Dan Szczesny can be reached at hippo@hippopress.com.

violence against homeless continues

September 10, 2007 | Express1Monday, Sept. 10, 2007 Freemanchexpress.com
Saturday attack A group of young men severely beat a homeless man early on Saturday, Sept. 8, re-sulting in severe head, facial and back injuries, police said.David Lovering, 38, pre-viously of 124 O’Malley St., told police that he was sleeping overnight in a wooded area near the corner of Queen City Avenue and Elm Street when he was attacked by five to seven men in their teens to early 20s.The victim told police the men kicked him while he lay on the ground.The motive for the attack was unclear, police said.Lovering was taken to El-liot Hospital after the attack, where he was treated for severe but non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

Homelessness may not mean living on the street

Manchester, NH - Homelessness may not mean living on the street - hippopress.com - December 12, 2002


Homelessness may not mean living on the street

This week's cover story is about homelessness in Manchester,NH
_____________________________________________________________
Opinion By Jody Reese - HippoPress.com - December 12, 2002

Not surprisingly, their stories center on alcohol, drugs and
violence. It's a mix that leads to a loss of choice and
ultimately to living with friends, in shelters or under the
Granite Street Bridge.

Statistics tell us that more than a million people are homeless
nationwide. In Manchester alone 2,500 people are considered
homeless, though only about 10 of those actually winter outside.
We thought we'd take a look at four people who had lived on the
street and ask them how it happened.

There was no formula for homelessness. In one case, it seemed to
be by choice, though the man had trouble distinguishing fantasy
from reality. In another, it was a mix of a bad home life and a
few poor decisions. In yet another case, it was drugs. Using
heroin overrode the impulse to find shelter.I see these folks or folks like them almost every day in the
city, wandering the streets, trying to keep busy until the
shelter opens back up for the night. In a way, they become part
of the scenery. After a while I stop seeing them.
Dan Szczesny, our editor, and I talked about this before doing
the story. We agreed we should find out more about these members
of our community. That raised another point, where do the
homeless really live?

In most cases, it's not a tent, under the bridge or in a tunnel
under the Millyard, but in a hotel, with a friend, in a shelter
or in a substance abuse program. Homeless doesn't necessarily
mean living on the street, it means not having a stable place to
call home.

However, we did find a few of the people who live outdoors and
evidence of others who do, including their campsites in tunnels
under the Millyard.

There are no public policy conclusions I can draw from our story.
It's very different stories about four

different people with very different problems.

Perhaps that's why it has been so hard for private groups and the
government to come up with a way to end homelessness. It's a
symptom of drug use, domestic abuse, poverty and mental
disease.

Nonetheless, that does not end our responsibility to these
folks.


Jody Reese can be reached at: hippo@...
Copyright © 2002 HIPPOPRESS LLC.
________________________________________________________________
source page:
http://www.hippopress.com/pubnote/021212_pubnote.html

article from HippoPress "underground and outside"

By Dave Karlotski - HippoPress.com - December 12, 2002

When Canal Street was an actual canal, massive tunnels called
penstocks carried the river water under the mills and back into
the Merrimack.

There are a half dozen of these tunnels under the mills between
Granite and Bridge Streets, all mostly filled with river sand.

They all show evidence of casual occupancy, strewn with blankets,
clothes, bottles and styrofoam take-out containers, but three
tunnels have mattresses, and two of those are still active even
now that the weather has turned cold. They're piled high with
blankets and old sleeping bags, with little shelves set up
against the stone holding neat rows of cans, bottles, utensils,
toiletries and nick-nacks.

Each tunnel is different. Some are only three or four feet high
at the mouth and you have to scramble through to get into the
taller chamber inside; others are almost tall enough to stand in.
One is only a few feet deep, while another runs back almost 100
feet into the earth and is partly flooded with cold, dark water.
All are only a few yards from the river.

One tunnel mouth is carefully closed off with a big blue tarp and
two-by-fours. Inside are two beds and a chair. The light through
the tarp soaks the chamber in a blue glow.

Just a few feet directly overhead is the parking lot for one of
the converted mill buildings, full of cars. You could throw a
rock and hit the buildings that house Segway LLC or The
RiverStone Group.

Homeless activist Cindy Carlson estimates there are about 10
people camped outside in the city right now, but that the number
swells into the hundreds in the summer. She knows the three who
live here in the tunnels, but none are there when we visit. She
introduces us to Dennis and Levi, however, who are both living
outside and have agreed to show us their camps.

Dennis is 41 and lives in a tent in the middle of the city,
within sight of the C.A. Hoitt building. He is tall and friendly
with a deep, clear voice. He's been living outside since last
year.

He has a dome tent covered with several layers of tarps to make
it more weatherproof. There are several layers of blankets and
sleeping bags inside, and an extra layer of insulation wrapped
around the outside.

He has a firepit, which he says he can't use without a burn
permit. The frying pan on top of the firepit is full of snow.

Dennis is proud of his camp, although he hasn't stayed here since
it snowed two days ago.

"The wind blows, I just hear it, I don't feel it. It rains, it
sounds nice. I don't feel it. Affordable housing? It all came out
of a Sunday flier from Wal-Mart!"

Over the summer, he went up to Loudon and worked at the race
track. He loves racing, he says. But the races are over, and the
weather has turned.

He says he won't go back to New Horizons because the rules are
too strict, and that Labor Ready let him go from a job. He hints
at trouble with both organizations but won't say exactly what
happened.

Sometimes he collects cans now, sometimes he finds other odd
jobs. Sometimes he travels with Carlson and speaks to people
about being homeless.

Levi's camp is much more secluded. It's only a short walk from
downtown, but it's far enough in the woods that you'd never find
it by accident. Levi says that in the two years that he's had
that camp, he's never been disturbed.

It's a simple camp, a couple of tarps hung from some trees. He
has a little stove for cooking and a small hatchet for collecting
wood.

Among his possessions is a bag of turkey feathers which Levi has
collected. He says that there are nine wild turkeys living near
him, and he sees moose and deer as well.

Levi is 54, but he looks older. He has been living outside on and
off for 40 years, ever since he ran away from home in Los Angeles
when he was 13.

This is just one of Levi's camps. He has other, lesser camps all
around town where he can hole up if he's too far from home and
doesn't want to walk all the way back. He calls them his "line
camps."

Levi says that he's never been down to the tunnels, but that he
lived under the Amoskeag Bridge for years and only left when
crack addicts started congregating under the bridge and
threatening him.

Carlson says that she often has to track people, that she heard
about Levi for years before she met him.

"I kept hearing about a guy who lived under the bridge, but he
was never there when I went," she remembers. Then she heard he'd
moved somewhere else, and when she saw a trail leading into the
woods she followed it and found his camp.

Carlson moves in different circles than most of us, and sees
different things. She tries to keep track of the camps around the
city, but they come and go. She found one by the trestle near
Second Street a few weeks ago; she's heard of another out by the
airport.

She says that the islands in the Merrimack are populated
in the summer by younger people who go out there and have big
fires. She shows us a recently-used tent in the woods within
sight of Eddy Road, but the kids who work at the gas station
across the street say they've never noticed it and never met the
people who lived there.

It's all so easy to miss.