Elderly woman dies in Detroit house fire

[Hannah Bell]

It was the third deadly fire in a Detroit home without utilities since January. Earlier this month, three children perished in a fire on Bangor Street the same day that DTE cut the home’s unauthorized hookup to outside power lines. In January, two wheelchair-bound men and a friend died after fire consumed their Dexter Avenue home, which was also without gas and electricity.

The name of the woman who died on Tuesday evening was not officially released, but was reported as Anne Mazenka. Neighbors say she was unmarried and childless, and had lived in the same home on Charles Street since her youth. Though she was reclusive, neighbors helped her with yard work.

“We used to go and help her clean up her yard,” neighbor Carolyn Cumming told the World Socialist Web Site. “We helped out... so she didn’t have to come out because she was so old,” another neighbor, Jeff Kubiza, told a local news station.

The fire was reported around 5:00 pm. Before fire fighters arrived, three people attempted to break into the house, but met obstacles behind windows and doors. The local media immediately seized on this as the explanation for what caused the blaze, emphasizing that her home was full of “clutter” and that this hampered rescue efforts.

Among four local news reports on the fire, all reported that the house was cluttered, but only one noted—at the end of its story—that Mazenka lived without utilities.

A reporter for the local Fox News station breathlessly led her televised report on the fire in the following manner: “We’ve learned that the elderly woman who lived there lived a life of hoarding, and that may ultimately have contributed to her death.”

When reached by the WSWS, a spokesman for DTE, Scott Simon, said that there had been no gas or electric service to the home since 2006. The company had shut off the utilities because of a fence blocking access to the home’s electricity meter.

[jtuck004]

1. Hoarding

The hoarding that may have had the most impact was that of all all our financial titans hoarding wealth so that people like this have to live on scraps, and the politics that won't tax to prevent this kind of tragedy.

Maybe she was just burning papers in the stove to keep warm.

She had neighbors to help, yet the reason given for turning off the utilities was "a fence was in the way". Not money. Reclusive may have meant language or other issues. It is really hard to win the trust of some people, with good reason. But there is no good reason for people to die this way in a country with so much.

I hope she and all the other victims rest in peace.