Patch Blog: Great Vengeance and Furious Fire

Hi there, Samantha Scarano. It must feel very good to sit in your cell and realize that you really got payback for some real or imagined slight when you and wrought misery on everyone involved, forever.

Let me explain what a fully engaged fire does and who suffers and how. One night in 1972 - right about Christmas, my apartment on Riverside Drive in NYC caught fire. It blew the windows out and sucked flame from the 7th floor that could be seen up and down Riverside Drive. The bath tub cracked in half. The porcelain in the sink melted, and it took seven hours in bitter cold winter wind to end the flames.  

All that remained were smoldering embers and sogginess and that horrible smell. No human died. Our three dead cats were found in the very back bedroom - clearly attempting to escape the flames. It was my 6-year-old daughter's room. There was nothing there at all left. No clothes, shoes, toys, dolls, books...nothing. She never saw it, because she was heading north to see my family with her Christmas gifts. She never saw it ever.

I was leaving my husband that night, and was in the lobby waiting for a cab when the elevator man said smoke was billowing from under our door. I don't know where my husband was; maybe we were still arguing and went down together. Or not.

We were both upstairs very quickly and in an attempt to use the floor's fire hose, someone turned the water on first and it seized. By this time, the apartment - which had been freshly painted that fall - was becoming engulfed in flames. The sound of fire engines seemed endless. The water was being sprayed from the street level up to 7B - the windows were gone  and cold air fed the fire and the water was hindered by the windchill factor off the river - something like 40F below.

No - I don't know how it started and it was not classified as arson. But in my heart, I suspect it may have been an act of vengeance by my late husband. It was an ugly time for us. My building was a pre-war 17 story building with walls and floors as thick as stone. The plaster cracked and allowed water to seep downward causing reparable damage to other apartments - but no other apartments were hurt.  

I stayed until about dawn when the fire was finally out - it had raged for seven hours. An exhausted fire firefighter begged me not to walk through, but I had to see it and he stayed with me. I shall never forget that act of kindness. I tried to salvage anything I could, but everything was gone in every room. Photo albums, wedding pictures, correspondence - a marriage had begun and ended there.

Neighbors became friends and kids started school and it was all gone - forever. I found my husband at another friend's. He threw a glass of whisky in my face and I called a cab and left.

So Samantha Scarano, how does it feel to have been the intentional creator of this disaster times an entire small apartment building? Arson steals. It destroys, it kills and it leaves a mark and memory of misery upon its victims that never goes away. It taints with the smell of smoke all the memories of everyone involved. It steals cherished parts of their lives and this, all because you were going to fix someone real good. Your presumption of innocence is of course pro forma, but you have been relieved for the moment of your accelerator, your bottle,your rag and your matches.

A jury will decide and you may walk free to continue your life. That is not what I think will happen, but it could. In my dream scenario, they will fix you real good. You will be confined for a very long time and you will not get much sympathy - even from your colleagues. And prison, especially at your age, is not party night any night. If you walk out at all you will be old and even more bitter. You will be broken by what confinement does. You will have deserved it.

My thoughts go to the people whose lives you stole, whose homes you destroyed and whose hearts you have broken. They will read this and understand that someone else has walked in their shoes. They will move along and at some point reaccumulate other beloved things of their lives and they will become almost whole again, but they will always remember the smell of smoke and the sound of sirens and a momentary terror will come over them and they will think of you, getting even.