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☁️Cloudy and muggy, with a chance of thunderstorms and highs in the 80s. Sunset is at 8:18 p.m.
I was struck by the words of Paul Ferreira, head cook at the Gabriel House assistant living facility in Fall River. His workplace, he said, was a community for people who had a hard time finding an affordable home. A fire tore through it Sunday night, killing 9 people and injuring 30.
“Not knowing it was the last time I was cooking for them, it’s sad. They become part of your family,” Ferreira told the Associated Press. “Some of these people have no family members. Where are they going to go now?”
Four Things to Know
1. Fifteen immigration judges nationwide — including in Massachusetts — were laid off via email Friday, according to NPR and the union representing immigration judges. Their final day on the job will be July 22.
They join about 50 other judges fired in the last 6 months. “There was a lot of political noise around us. I said 'they’re not going to pressure me out of this job,'” one fired judge told NPR. “I have no regrets staying until the very end.” (Learn more about immigration judge layoffs during the second Trump administration here.)
2. Attorneys general in Massachusetts and 22 other states are suing the Trump administration over the freezing of $6.8 billion in nationwide funds for after school and summer programs — some at public schools and some at private organizations like the Boys & Girls Club and the YMCA.
The federal government was scheduled to pay Massachusetts $107 million, in money approved for these programs, on July 1, but the money never came. “Local education systems have already approved their budgets, there are already developed staff plans, signed contracts to provide educational services, and now all of that is disrupted,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said.
3. A Worcester nonprofit cancelled this year’s Latin American Festival, an event that usually draws thousands of people with food, music and more. Tina Velazquez, interim CEO of the organization CENTRO, told Worcester radio station WMEG it’s become more expensive and volunteers are harder to find. Some people have told her they worry about immigration agents targeting the festival.
“We understand their suffering. We understand what they are going through,” Velazquez told WMEG in Spanish. “We have families who constantly call, needing food, and don’t dare approach the food bank out of fear. We also have families that aren’t going to work, families that sometimes don’t send children to school or don’t take them to the doctor because of that fear that they have.”
4. Aliyah Boston — the WNBA’s 2023 first-overall draft pick for the Indiana Fever and a former Worcester Academy stand out — is investing in another professional women’s sport: the Boston Legacy Football Club.
“This city helped raise me, and the support I felt here shaped so much of who I am,” she said in a statement. “And yes… Boston repping Boston just felt right.”
Nine deaths in fire at Fall River assisted living facility
We don’t yet know what caused the fire at the Gabriel House assistant living facility in Fall River. The city’s fire chief, Jeffrey Bacon, said there will be “a very extensive investigation,” and the building’s owner is cooperating. Nine people died in the fire; authorities have not yet released their names. Another 30 people were injured and dozens of residents are now in a homeless shelter.
But we have started to piece together accounts from residents, families, neighbors and firefighters who rushed to the facility on Oliver Street, about a block away from Kennedy Park, as the fire spread on Sunday night.
“I opened my door and the smoke just hit me. It filled my whole room and the bathroom,” resident Lorraine Ferrara said. “I tried to get out. … I couldn’t get out to the exit door. I couldn’t make it to the door. And it was right there.”
She got to her bathroom and called for help through the window, she said. A firefighter rescued her down a ladder.
Two of Ferrara’s friends died in the fire, she said.
“They both told me every day they loved me. And I told them I loved them,” Ferrara said.
Fire Capt. Frank O’Reagan was off duty when he heard about the fire and rushed to help. The first firefighters had arrived about 40 minutes earlier, and were still trying to work through exhaustion, he said. He climbed a ladder to the third floor and, since there was no breathing equipment on hand for him, searched for survivors while breathing in smoke for as long as he could.
“First room, empty. Second door I kicked in, body. Next room, empty. Next room, body,” O’Reagan said. “I searched as much as I could but after a while you just can’t take that much smoke.”
His brother Michael O’Reagan, president of the firefighters union who also responded to the fire, said the department did not have the staff to deal with the fire. Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Firefighters union, said the department’s staffing did not meet national standards: eight companies had three firefighters on duty instead of four.
“We did the best we could with what we had, and what we had was not enough,” Michael O’Reagan said Monday. “For many years in the city of Fall River, public safety has been a line item and lives are a budgetary concern. Last night was an example of this.”
Read the full story from GBH’s Craig LeMoult and Lisa Wardle here.
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