Copyright The Boston Globe
AMHERST — College juniors and roommates Myles Donato, Cameron Pellegrino, and Dylan Shalom weren’t home Friday night when a massive fire began to spread near their apartment building at 57 Olympia Drive, a privately owned complex across the street from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They learned of the blaze from their fourth roommate, who connected them all on FaceTime. Pellegrino was at a hockey game when he saw the scene on his phone — “inferno” is how he recently described it. He was wearing brand-new clothes, including a Pats sweatshirt, from Marshalls. He lost everything else. Donato and Shalom both happened to be wearing shirts advertising Olympia Place the night of the fire. Its slogan: “Love where you live.” Where they lived no longer exists. The building that once housed around 230 students is now a pile of rubble and ash. Firefighters were still spraying down possible hotspots on Monday, three days after flames spread from an adjacent construction site at 47 Olympia Drive, where a new residential building was going up, similar to the occupied one. The properties are owned by Archipelago Investments LLC. Advertisement High winds and low water pressure helped the flames spread. By Saturday, the town of Amherst had declared a state of emergency and the fire chief had determined demolition was the only way to control the blaze. “We’ve never seen a fire that displaced this many people,” said Amherst assistant fire chief Stephen Gaughan, who added it’s “mind-blowing” that no one was injured. The cause of the fire is under investigation by the State Fire Marshall’s office, the Amherst Fire Department, and the Amherst Police Department. It is not believed to be suspicious in nature, according to a Saturday press release. With an open investigation and many lingering questions, students were feeling unsettled Monday. One senior who didn’t want to give her name brushed tears away as she stood at the charred site. Advertisement Some of the displaced students have found alternate housing, while others have parents who are frantically posting online looking for options. Meanwhile, both the university and the town of Amherst are stressing that there are systems in place to support displaced students, and more help is on the way. The university mobilized an Emergency Resource Center to help with immediate needs such as short-term housing, food, clothing, medical prescriptions, and mental health counseling, said Jeff Hescock, executive director for Environmental Health & Safety and Emergency Management at UMass Amherst. “Some people lost their passport, some people lost their keys, some people lost their laptop. The list goes on and on,” Hescock said, adding that the next phase will consider long-term housing, and the university is working to contact property owners and landlords. “The housing market is tight in Amherst, we all know that, and that’s the challenge right now,” said Amherst town manager Paul Bockelman. “We just had 230 beds taken offline.” The building under construction at 47 Olympia Drive was going to be a five-story “private apartment-style dormitory,” which would have stood at about 56 feet on the site of a former sorority house. It would have featured 68 units geared for college students, according to town planning board documents. 57 Olympia Drive, the neighboring building that caught fire, opened in 2016 on the site of a former fraternity house and has an appraised value of $18.5 million, according to town documents. The units, ranging from studios to four-bedroom apartments, had 9-foot ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, hardwood floors, and stainless steel appliances. On Monday evening, Chancellor Javier Reyes sent a letter to the campus community outlining the university’s “next phase of recovery,” including five coordination groups for basic needs, academic support, student support and wellbeing, donations, and communications. He said Emergency Response Center teams are also connecting students to temporary laptops and phones, as well as replacement course materials and other critical items, such as legal documents. Advertisement University employees will be collecting donations from campus drives to help stock a student thrift store, New2U, for processing and distribution; a student care supply closet is taking donations of toiletries and household items; and food donations will be delivered to the campus food pantry through Nov. 18. Any food donations should brought to one of the November Food Drive bins located around campus, said a university spokesperson. Reyes noted the Student Care & Emergency Response Fund, which has collected $154,000 to help victims so far, is being used to expedite assistance for Olympia Place residents, with all funds raised going directly to students in need. The Dean of Students Office is temporarily pausing the standard fund microgrant process to distribute grants on a case-by-case basis, according to financial need, he added. Sitting in the office of the student newspaper, the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, Donato, Pellegrino, and Shalom said they were grateful for an outpouring of community support. They said Nathan Strauss, a radio and TV broadcaster who’s known as the voice of UMass Hockey, put them up at a Comfort Inn for 36 hours after the fire. An internship coordinator tried to give Pellegrino “the cash in her wallet today, which I didn’t accept,” he said, “but it’s so sweet.” And “three girls in our sports journalism class ... they’ve been so amazing,” said Donato. “They made us pasta and banana bread.” Gestures like these are making up for losing belongings like a beloved childhood blanket, a signed Drake Maye jersey, and their first pan they ever bought for their apartment. “It was a really big pan. We called it Big Pan,” said Donato, and they all cracked up laughing. Advertisement Having a sense of humor helps cope with the loss, he added. “It’s like, you laugh or you cry.” James Vaznis of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Brooke Hauser can be reached at brooke.hauser@globe.com. Follow her @brookehauser.
