Massachusetts assisted-living blaze kills a musician, secretary, and veteran Army sharpshooter
The 100-unit assisted-living facility that burned Sunday night, killing nine people so far, opened in 1999. Some photos on its Facebook page show neat rooms but older-looking carpeting and furniture. Her granddaughter didn't like the assisted-living center, but 86-year-old Eleanor Willett wanted something that left her money to play the slots at a casino. She earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford a higher-priced assisted-living facility, Holly Mallowes told The Associated Press Tuesday.
'She said, 'I don't need much, but a roof over my head and someplace to put my sewing machine,'' Mallowes said.
Willett was the oldest to die. Here's what we know so far about the victims.
Eleanor Willett
A Massachusetts native, Willett spent more than 20 years as a secretary and even worked briefly as a cocktail waitress, her granddaughter said.
Her home was always a base for everyone in her family, Mallowes said.
'My mom worked a lot and Grammy 's was always a place we called home,' said Mallowes, 45. 'We lived with her often. She was very strong. She outlived two husbands and raised five children. She was absolutely a joy.'
Mallowes, a paralegal who lives in Dartmouth, described her grandmother as 'very religious' and a 'devout Catholic.'
'She wanted to be somewhat independent,' Mallowes said of Willett's decision to move to Gabriel House in Fall River, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Boston. "To leave her home alone all day, I was to afraid something might happen.'
'As our grandparents and parents get older, we say 'I'll make it to go see them a different day' and you always put it off," Mallowes said. "See them while you can. Tomorrow is not promised.'
Kim Mackin
Makin, 71, was a violist who performed in Boston area orchestras, according to her nephew, Austin Mackin.
She was described in a statement from family members as 'gifted beyond words.'
'We will all miss Kimmy,' the statement read. 'Beyond being exceptionally kind, few knew that she was a brilliant musician.'
Kim Mackin received a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music and after graduating, toured the world as first chair viola.
Breonna Cestodio described her 78-year-old uncle, Rochon, as 'a very quiet guy,' yet a 'great guy.'
'He kept to himself," she told reporters. 'He was a sharpshooter in the Army. He loved getting visits from all of his nieces and nephews.'
Rochon moved into Gabriel House about a year ago. Cestodio had little good to say about the facility, remarking that it always seemed hot inside the building.
'Every time you visited him, he was sweating,' she said. 'No air in the building. I never saw any workers, except in one closed-off section. I never saw any workers.'
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BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Dhaka crash: 'My friend died right in front of me'
Farhan Hasan had just finished an exam and left the classroom chatting to friends when a Bangladeshi air force training jet crashed into his school campus - killing at least 20 people."The burning plane was hitting the building right in front of my eyes," the Milestone School and College student told BBC from the school in a northern suburb of the capital, Dhaka shows a huge fire and thick smoke, after the aircraft slammed into a two-storey than 170 people were injured in the armed forces said that the F-7 jet had experienced a mechanical fault after taking off for a training exercise just after 13:00 local time (07:00 GMT). The pilot, Flight Lieutenant Md. Taukir Islam, was among those killed. Farhan, who was speaking to BBC Bangla alongside his uncle and his father, added: "My best friend, the one I was in the exam hall with, he died right in front of my eyes. "In front of my eyes... the plane went right over his head. And many parents were standing inside because the younger kids were coming out since it was the end of the school day... the plane took the parents along with it."A teacher at the college, Rezaul Islam, told the BBC that he saw the plane "directly" hit the teacher, Masud Tarik, told Reuters that he heard an explosion: "When I looked back, I only saw fire and smoke... There were many guardians and kids here." Hours after the crash, in a residential area which is quite densely populated, huge crowds gathered with people standing on top of buildings to get a people ran in all directions, ambulances and volunteers worked to find their way to carry the injured and many bodies out of the Milestone School and least 30 ambulances were seen moving people woman seeking information at the scene told the BBC her son had called her right after the crash, but she had not heard from him since. More than 50 people, including children and adults, were taken to hospital with burns, a doctor at the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery families and relatives of victims were inside the hospital - including Shah Alam, the uncle of a Year 8 boy, Tanvir Ahmed, who died in the crash."My beloved nephew is in the morgue right now," Mr Alam said holding on to his younger brother - Tanvir's father - who was unable to of the victims inside the burns hospital are minors - most of them are between the ages of 9 and 14. Many other members of the public came to the hospital to donate blood; while a number of politicians from the two prominent political parties Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami health ministry said victims have been admitted across seven hospitals in the Dhaka; while the interim government has announced a day of mourning on Tuesday across the country, when the national flag will be flown at pilot had tried to navigate the jet to a less populated area after the mechanical fault occurred, the armed forces statement said. He had only just taken off from an air force base in the capital. An investigation committee has been formed to look into the incident, the statement Yunus, the leader of Bangladesh's interim government, said "necessary measures" would be taken to investigate the cause of the incident and "ensure all kinds of assistance"."This is a moment of deep sorrow for the nation. I wish the injured a speedy recovery and instruct all authorities, including the hospitals concerned, to deal with the situation with utmost importance," he said in a post on social media site X.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
How do airports try to prevent bird collisions? It's a never-ending job
My tone wavered between enthusiasm and concern. 'Is that a great black-backed gull,' I asked. It was a cold December morning, and I was cruising along the interior roads of Boston's Logan international airport in a white pickup truck. At the wheel was Jeff Turner, who, among other duties, oversees efforts to control wildlife at the airport, including making sure that errant gulls and other birds don't stray into flight paths and cause an accident. He glanced toward the harbor and confirmed that a lone great black-backed was indeed mixed in with a few herring gulls. There is nothing remarkable about spotting this species on the shorelines of Boston. But it sure is fun to gawk at them. They're gluttonous omnivores that will devour rats, rabbits and rotting garbage, and they can be obnoxiously loud and territorial. They're also enormous: the largest of all gull species with wingspans that top out at 5.5ft (1.7 metres), a feathered Goliath that no pilot wants to see perched near a runway. We spent a moment admiring it while commercial flights taxied behind us and roared overhead. 'When you see one sitting next to a herring gull, it's crazy just how much bigger it is,' Turner said. 'Surprisingly, we don't see a lot of black-backed strikes. The majority of our gull strikes are herring gulls.' With that, he parked the truck, walked over to a silver-barreled air cannon set up on a small platform in a patch of grass, and let it rip. The whompfff of the blast made me flinch and sent the gulls scattering. We got back in the truck and rolled onward, looking for more loitering birds to harass. Every day, birds and airplanes collide. The Federal Aviation Administration recorded approximately 19,000 such incidents across nearly 800 US airports in 2023. In total, those strikes cost airlines an estimated $461m. The issue has been in the headlines in recent months following a string of high-profile bird strikes. Korean officials found the remains of Baikal teals in both engines of the Jeju Air flight that crashed in December and killed 179 people (the extent to which the animals contributed to the crash remains under investigation). In February of this year, a hawk obliterated the nose of an Airbus A320 in Brazil. Then in March, a FedEx cargo plane made a fiery emergency landing in Newark, New Jersey, after one of its engines ingested a bird and started spewing flames. Two weeks later, a bird rocketed through the windscreen of a private airplane in California, injuring the passenger and precipitating another emergency landing. Turner's team, which includes five technicians and a contracted United States Department of Agriculture wildlife biologist, is responsible for minimizing the likelihood of such calamities at Logan. They use pyrotechnics and air cannons to scare away birds and do whatever they can to make the landscape as unappealing as possible – be it cutting the grass, draining standing water or ripping up berry-bearing bushes that might attract flocks of peckish blackbirds. When all else fails, the technicians have shotguns in their trucks. 'We always go heavy on harassment,' Turner explained. 'And then the last resort is lethal.' The goal, after all, isn't to kill birds. It's to keep them away from airplanes. That's a daunting task at Logan, where an average of 1,200 flights come and go each day. The airport sprawls across 2,400 acres (971 hectares) with water on three sides. During spring and fall migration, managing birds here is like defending against swarm warfare. 'The fact that we're surrounded by water is a huge challenge … If you're [a bird] flying down the coastline and you see this,' Turner said, gesturing to long stretches of grass on one side and the shallows of Boston harbor on the other, 'it's a whole different habitat.' Turner has worked at Logan since 2010. The most unexpected animal encounter during that time was with a ticked-off otter whose powerful bite left 'five or six holes in my hand', he said. Coyotes make occasional appearances in the winter, as do snowy owls, for which Turner depends on a skilled volunteer who carefully traps and relocates them. On a few occasions, deer have turned up near the runways: 'The most incredible part,' Turner said, is that the deer swam to the airport from the surrounding harbor islands. A breezy conversationalist, Turner's eyes never stopped scanning the perimeter of the airport. He pointed out brants, common eiders, a merlin, and bucket loads of gulls. As we drove on, we saw Canada geese congregating near the water and a few dozen European starlings zipping around further inland. Canada geese are famously associated with bird strikes thanks to the heroics of Capt Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger, who in January 2009 safely landed an Airbus A320 on the Hudson river after hitting a flock of geese in what's been dubbed the 'Miracle on the Hudson'. But European starlings can be every bit as dangerous. 'They just undulate everywhere and when you harass them they split and come back together,' Turner said. Starling murmurations are such a threat that Turner's team erected a trap made of wood and chicken wire with a one-way entry point at the top and food and water below. Pity the technicians who have to 'dispatch' the trapped birds by snapping their necks. If that sounds grim, it may help to consider the tragic history of European starlings at Logan. For several years prior to meeting Turner, I had been researching a book on Roxie Laybourne, a scientist who pioneered the field of forensic ornithology while working at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Her career took an unusual turn on 4 October 1960, when a flight taking off from Logan hit an enormous flock of birds and crashed into the water, killing 62 people. It was unprecedented and terrifying. Investigators needed to know the type of bird that caused the crash, so they sent some of the remains down to the Smithsonian. Laybourne and her boss sorted through the pieces and found enough feathers to confirm that starlings were to blame. In the following years, bird strikes caused more fatal airplane crashes: in 1962, tundra swans downed a commercial flight over Maryland, killing all 17 people on board; and in 1964, astronaut Theodore Freeman died after his training jet careened into a flock of snow geese near Houston. To establish new safety standards, engineers and regulators needed to know what types of birds were being hit most frequently and how much those birds weighed, so they turned to Laybourne for help. Using her microscope and the Smithsonian's vast collection of research specimens, she developed ways of identifying birds by analyzing the microscopic structures of feathers. She went on to apply her skills to criminal investigations, including murder and poaching cases, but more than anything focused on aviation, identifying the remains of more than 10,000 airplane-struck birds. Nowadays, most airlines voluntarily report bird strikes and send the splattered animal bits they recover to the Smithsonian's Feather Identification Lab, run by Carla Dove, who trained under Laybourne. The lab works with the FAA, the US air force and the US navy, and identified more than 11,000 bird-strike remains last year, dozens of which of which were collected in Boston. Most bird strikes cause no damage whatsoever. But every once in a while, things go awfully wrong and that's what keeps Turner on his toes. His job is a never-ending, always-evolving risk-benefit analysis in which mundane tasks such as trimming the grass can be a catch-22. Whenever the mowers go out in the summer, he explained, huge amounts of barn swallows come swooping in for the buffet of insects that get kicked up in the process. 'We don't want the bird strikes, but we gotta cut the grass,' he added, playing up the damned-if-you-do nature of it all. In this line of work, even the most well-intentioned actions can have undesirable consequences. He offered up the example of Boston harbor, once one of the most polluted harbors in the country. After decades of clean-up efforts and programs to reduce sewage overflows, the water is swimmable and it's a legitimate environmental success story. While Turner loves seeing such progress, the wildlife manager in him laments the fact that better water quality means more productive shellfish beds, which in turn means more gulls. 'The gulls have adapted to it,' he said, pointing to shards of oyster shells on the side of the road. 'They're taking them out at low tide, dropping them on the pavement or on the runways, and cracking the shells open to have a nice little feast. It's a pain.' With air traffic increasing at Logan and pretty much everywhere else, Turner is a realist who knows that bird strikes are a problem that cannot be stopped, only mitigated. 'It's inevitable that something's going to happen,' he said. 'And we just do everything we can do to make sure it's not going to be one of those catastrophic strikes.' Chris Sweeney is the author of The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne, coming 22 July from Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
At least 20 dead and more than 170 rescued after Air Force training plane smashed into school in Bangladesh
At least 20 people, mostly students, have been killed and more than 170 rescued after an Air Force training plane smashed into a school in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Airforce training aircraft smashed into a campus in Dhaka, the capital, shortly after takeoff on Monday afternoon where it burst into flames and claimed the life of the pilot. Another 171 students were rescued with injuries from a smoldering two-story building, officials said, including many with burns who were whisked away in helicopters, motorised rickshaws and the arms of firefighters and parents. The Chinese-made F-7 BGI training aircraft experienced a 'technical malfunction' moments after takeoff at 1:06pm local time, and the pilot attempted to divert the plane to a less populated area before crashing into the campus of Milestone School and College, according to a statement from the military. Students said the school's buildings trembled violently, followed by a big explosion that sent them running for safety. A desperate scene soon unfolded at the crash site, as panicked relatives searched for loved ones. Screams filled the air at a nearby hospital. Television footage showed fire and smoke billowing from the site of the crash as bystander are seeing trying put out the flames. Other clips circulating on social media show crowds of students fleeing from the scene in a panic. The Milestone school is in Dhaka's Uttara neighborhood, which is roughly seven miles drive from the A.K. Khandaker air force base. The school is in a densely populated area near a metro station and numerous shops and homes. The pilot, Flight Lt. Mohammed Toukir Islam, made 'every effort to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas toward a more sparsely inhabited location,' the military said, adding that it would investigate the cause of the accident. The government announced a national day of mourning on Tuesday, with flags to fly at half-staff across the country. At the crash site Monday afternoon, a father sprinted with his daughter cradled in his arms. A mother cried out, having found her younger child, but desperately searched for her older one. Another father described his feeling of helplessness while waiting to learn the fate of his daughter. 'The plane crashed on the building where my daughter was. My wife called me, but I was praying so I could not pick up,' Jewel, who goes by one name, said at the scene. 'When I came here I saw there was a huge fire. There was a dead body of a child.' Luckily, his daughter was safe, he said, but he saw many other children suffering from burns. Students also scrambled to see what had happened. 'We fought with the crowd and the soldiers to get close to the crash site in our school,' said Estiak Elahi Khan, who is in the 11th grade. 'What I saw I can't describe that... that's terrible.' Doctors at Uttara Adhunik Hospital said more than 60 students, many between the ages of 12 and 16, were transferred to a special hospital for burn victims. Bangladesh's fire service and security personnel conduct a search and rescue operation after an Air Force training jet crashed into a school in Dhaka on July 21 A truck arrives after an air force training aircraft crashed into Milestone College campus, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 21 July 2025 By Monday evening, rescuers continued to scour the debris, searching for bodies. A crane was being used to remove debris. Bangladesh's interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, also pledged an investigation, and he expressed his deep sorrow over the 'heartbreaking accident.' He called it 'a moment of deep national grief.' Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also expressed shock and sadness. 'Our hearts go out to the bereaved families,' Modi said in a post on X. 'India stands in solidarity with Bangladesh and is ready to extend all possible support and assistance.' Rafiqa Taha, a student who was not present at the time of the crash, said by phone that the school, with some 2,000 students, offers classes from elementary grades through high school. 'I was terrified watching videos on TV,' the 16-year-old said. 'My God! It's my school.' It is the deadliest plane crash in the Bangladeshi capital in recent memory. In 2008, another F-7 training jet crashed outside Dhaka, killing its pilot, who had ejected after he discovered a technical problem. The incident comes a little over a month after an Air India plane crashed on top of a medical college hostel in neighbouring India's Ahmedabad city, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and 19 on the ground, marking the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade. A preliminary report into the crash found that fuel switches for the engines of the doomed Boeing 787 Dreamliner began to lose thrust and sink down moments after setting of to London from the Indian city on June 12. In the flight's final moments, one pilot was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he cut off the fuel. 'The other pilot responded that he did not do so,' the report by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) said. It did not identify which remarks were made by the flight's captain and which by the first officer, nor which pilot immediately transmitted the distress call: 'Thrust not achieved... falling... Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!' Seconds later the jet began losing height and exploded into a fireball after smashing into a hostel on the ground in Gujarat, claiming the lives of all but one passenger on board and 19 people on the ground. Investigators' early assessments indicate no apparent fault with the Boeing or its engines, suggesting that Boeing and engine maker GE had no apparent responsibility for the accident. But the report does not say how the switch - which is used to start or shut down the engines and are typically left on during flight - could have flipped to the cutoff position. 'Did they move on their own or did they move because of the pilots?' he asked. 'And if they were moved because of a pilot, why?' The report said the jet was carrying 54,200kg of fuel, which was within the 'allowable limits'. 'The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec,' the report said. 'The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off. A helicopter hovers over security personnel making way for an ambulance carrying an injured victim after an Air Force training jet crashed into a school in Dhaka on July 21, 2025 Referring to data recovered from the plane's two Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorders (EAFR), it continues: 'As per the EAFR, the Engine 1 fuel cutoff switch transitioned from CUTOFF to RUN at about 08:08:52 UTC. The APU Inlet Door began opening at about 08:08:54 UTC, consistent with the APU Auto Start logic. Thereafter at 08:08:56 UTC the Engine 2 fuel cutoff switch also transitions from CUTOFF to RUN. 'When fuel control switches are moved from CUTOFF to RUN while the aircraft is inflight, each engine's full authority dual engine control (FADEC) automatically manages a relight and thrust recovery sequence of ignition and fuel introduction.
