GBH Daily: Come sail away

🥵Very hot, with highs around 97 degrees. Sunset is at 8:19 p.m.

GBH’s Dan Murphy captured Abby Evangelista and her corgi, Rocko, at Sail250 this weekend. “Rocko gets dressed up for lots of occasions … sometimes just to go to the store, and he does so great with meeting people,” Evangelista said. Keep reading for more photos from the tall ships. 

A year ago today firefighters were extinguishing flames at the Gabriel House, an assisted living facility in Fall River. Ten people died in the fire, a tragedy for their loved ones and a scary moment for about 18,000 people who live in assisted living facilities across the state.

Now state officials have created new regulations for fire safety in assisted living facilities, going into effect later this month. Fire departments will inspect these facilities once a year, and facilities will need to submit emergency plans and train their workers on what to do in case of a fire.

GBH’s Craig LeMoult found that neither the new regulations nor state or federal fire codes address checking sprinkler systems. Some of the sprinklers at the Gabriel House weren’t working the night of the fire, including the ones in the room where it started.

“Had the sprinklers functioned properly, we’re not having this conversation right now. It is maybe a single fatality fire, but certainly not more than that,” Fall River fire chief Jeffrey Bacon told LeMoult. “The good news is that some of the sprinklers did function. And had they not, we would be here talking about 20, 30, 40 victims.” You can read the full story here.

Four Things to Know

1. Colleagues and friends are remembering Louisa Gag, a Boston transportation planner killed last week when a truck driver hit her as she rode her bike near the Roxbury Crossing MBTA stop. Gag grew up in Roslindale and worked for the city on expanding the BlueBikes bike-share program. Before that, she worked for the LivableStreets Alliance, co-authoring a plan to help cities stop traffic deaths. You can see her talk about her work in this 2019 video.

“In moments like these, there is a tendency to reduce the person to the way they died and to their activism,” said Stacy Thompson, a former executive director of LivableStreets. “While we may know Louisa as a deep champion of the city and a close advocate, she’s also a Boston Latin [School] kid. She’s also, like, the most infectious, hilarious person you’ve ever met. She’s also a daughter. It’s so important to us right now for her life to not be reduced to how she stopped living.”

2. More than 4,000 nurses are back at work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They went on a one-day strike last week, and hospital administrators kept them from returning to their jobs for another five days. The Massachusetts Nurses Association and Brigham management have been negotiating a contract for seven months, going back and forth over wages, health insurance premiums and staffing levels.

“It’s exciting, but also frightening,” said Christine Forgeron, a cardiac nurse at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “I don’t know what to expect when we go back to our patients. What happens next, because we still don’t have a contract,is the most unsettling part.”

3. Michael Walsh, a Republican candidate for state attorney general, will be on the primary ballot in September despite what Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Karp called “substantial evidence in the record of voter fraud.” The case began when Adam Roof, executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, submitted a complaint accusing a signature gatherer Walsh’s campaign hired of either falsifying or not meeting state requirements for 1,021 of the 10,677 signatures they submitted. Candidates for statewide office need 10,000 signatures to get onto the ballot.

Karp said that there was indeed evidence that the signatures came not from voters themselves but from a list of registered voters the state’s Republican party gave the signature gatherer. But the case fell on a technicality: state law required Roof, the Democratic party official, to submit his complaint by certified mail, and he did not do so. The state’s highest court still has to decide what will happen to Anne Manning Martin, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor who used the same signature gatherer.

4. Residents of towns around the Quabbin Reservoir flooded into the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority meeting last week to ask for a better deal. The Quabbin supplies clean drinking water for dozens of cities and towns in the eastern part of the state. Right now, the state requires towns like Shrewsbury, Belchertown, Orange and Pelham to keep their development in check to keep the Quabbin clean. Though those towns get some money in return, local officials said it’s not enough to cover their costs.

“We are protecting this watershed by foregoing any type of economic development, which is a cornerstone of providing the basics of education [and] public safety,” said state Rep. Aaron Saunders, of Belchertown. “It’s time for a change, and not an incremental one.”

Tall ships sail into Boston

Tomorrow is the last full day of Sail Boston, the city’s tall ships celebration. The ships will leave our harbor Thursday morning. GBH photographer Dan Murphy was there over the weekend to capture the Parade of Sail.

Dan Murphy / GBH News

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The Esmeralda, a ship from Chile, sailed by Castle Island.

Dan Murphy / GBH News

Carolyn Gustine carried her son, Patrick, on her shoulders.

You can see the full photo essay here. 

Dig deeper: 

–Spectators line Cape Cod Canal to see tall ships make their way to Sail250 in Boston

–The World Cup transformed Greater Boston. Will it last?

–Department of Agricultural Resources celebrates Ice Cream Trail program