Names of 5 victims in deadly May 2022 fires added to memorial on Main Street

Toni Caushi, Telegram & Gazette
·4 min read
Woodrow Adams Jr., who lost his father, his uncle and his grandmother in February 2021 after a fire at the family home on Jaques Avenue in Worcester, hugs his mother, Lorraine Adams, during a ceremony Tuesday announcing that five new names will be added to a monument commemorating the victims who have lost their lives in city fires since 1986.
Woodrow Adams Jr., who lost his father, his uncle and his grandmother in February 2021 after a fire at the family home on Jaques Avenue in Worcester, hugs his mother, Lorraine Adams, during a ceremony Tuesday announcing that five new names will be added to a monument commemorating the victims who have lost their lives in city fires since 1986.

WORCESTER — The names of the five people who lost their lives in city fires in 2022 were added to a memorial at Agawam and Main streets.

Marcel E. Fontaine, 29, Vincent L. Page, 41, Joseph Garchali, 47, Christopher Lozeau, 53 and Matthew J. Rubelsky, 51, were the names added Tuesday to the memorial that carries the names of those who have perished in fires since 1986.

Among the 30 people who gathered at the memorial were members of the Worcester Fire Department and family members of people who perished in fires — they listened and spoke, remembering their loved ones.

Aaliyah Hazard, the Gage Street tenant who escaped the fire through a window, stepped forward to say a few words.

Five new names will be added to a monument commemorating the victims who have lost their lives in city fires since 1986.
Five new names will be added to a monument commemorating the victims who have lost their lives in city fires since 1986.

At the Gage Street fire where four of the five people honored lost their lives, Hazard jumped off from the third floor of the three-decker engulfed in flames as a last resort to safety.

“(These events) cross all the boundaries of our lives, coating all that remains draped in the disbelief of our loss,” read an emotional Hazard from a statement. “We are blanketed and find the greatest comfort in the knowledge that they were and therefore are. They gave us and made us their best and so to keep them we keep doing ours.”

Fontaine, Page, Garchali and Lozeau were tenants at 2 Gage St. when they lost their lives in a May 14 fire. The fire was later determined to have been set.

A former tenant, Yvonne Ngoiri, 36, was arraigned in Superior Court last September with multiple counts of second-degree murder. The case is pending.

The mother of fallen Worcester Firefighter Christopher Roy, Michele Roy, with husband Ron Roy, right, and William T. Breault, chairman of the Main South Alliance for Public Safety, speaks during the ceremony.
The mother of fallen Worcester Firefighter Christopher Roy, Michele Roy, with husband Ron Roy, right, and William T. Breault, chairman of the Main South Alliance for Public Safety, speaks during the ceremony.

Rubelsky, the fifth person added to the memorial Tuesday, lost his life the following day in a separate fire at 6 Eames Road at a garage door installation business called Lashua Door Co.

The memorial, a black granite monolith that now holds 71 names, was first erected March 7, 1992, by the Main South Alliance for Public Safety to commemorate those who perished in fires. Death years date back as early as 1986.

Every March 7, the alliance meets at the memorial with family members and members of the Worcester Fire Department.

The date was chosen in honor of the tragic 1990 deaths on Florence Street of 28-year-old mother Ethel Baisden and her three children: Francis, 3, David, 2, and 7-month-old Paul, in a fire that was determined to have started when the baby’s blanket was ignited by a gas space heater.

For Don Courtney, a retired lieutenant firefighter who responded to the Florence Street fire, the thought of the children and their ages never left him.

“One of the hardest things for firefighters to see at that fire was to grasp what had happened and say, ‘This is just a little kid,’” said Courtney, who repeated the statement three times.

Among those present were also the parents of Christopher Roy, the city firefighter who fell in the line of duty while responding to a 2018 Lowell Street fire.

“It’s very hard for us to attend the memorial for Chris,” said his mother, Michele Roy. “This memorial involves other people, other families. I feel their pain.

“It’s not right,” she added referring to the five deaths. “It never should have happened.”

Candles with hand-written messages served as a memorial to the four victims of the Gage Street fire. The fire scene is shown on May 17, three days after the blaze. The building has since been torn down.
Candles with hand-written messages served as a memorial to the four victims of the Gage Street fire. The fire scene is shown on May 17, three days after the blaze. The building has since been torn down.

Worcester Fire Department Deputy Chief Adam Roche also spoke at the event, stressing the importance of preventing fires and the department’s preparations when responding to fires.

He made a point to expand the fire department and reach appropriate staffing of command structures.

Roche also stressed the importance of everyday measures that people can take to prevent fires.

“What people can do in their own dwellings, is make sure you have the smoke alarms, make sure you have clear egress paths,” said Roche. “Make sure you have two ways out of where you live, where you're staying.

“As a community, when we all come together and make sure that we put an emphasis on this and an emphasis on the fire safety codes and building codes, we can really make a dent in really prohibiting future accidents and future incidents from happening.”

At the end of the memorial ceremony, Destiny Smith, a representative of the alliance, read all 71 names.

For the years when fires had not claimed lives, Smith solemnly stated “no deaths.”

“Hopefully we'll have a good year when destiny will be able to say, ‘No deaths,’” said William T. Breault, the chair of the alliance. “It’s a much better feeling.”

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Names of 5 people who lost their lives in Worcester fires in 2022 added to a memorial