Residents’ escape, but blaze incinerates homes and belongings.
Most residents were on their way to bed when a fast moving fire leapt from a 2nd floor balcony to the 3rd and 4th floors and right through to the attic and roof. “Ceilings collapsed — even parts of the roof. At one point we had to take the firefighters out of the building, we were concerned about their safety,” said Quincy Fire Chief Tim Pettinelli.

All together, 56 units were destroyed; dozens of residents were displaced — many losing all their personal possessions.

Loss of monthly rent revenue: $85,000
Total cost of reconstruction: $2.5 million

One call and the Able team is mobilized. Within hours, a “make safe plan” is underway.
The water damage was significant. Sprinklers went off in all the units — whether they were in the line of the fire or not. It took our team and heavy-duty desiccant dryers eight days — blowing 50,000 cfm of dry air into the building — to dry all the water that had been absorbed by the walls, floors, and ceilings. Another team was then brought in to identify salvageable contents, pack them, clean them, and move everything to temporary storage until the restoration was complete.

Outside, Able crews removed charred debris, secured the property with a temporary fence, implemented gas meter protection, and set up Able’s mobile office. From here, our Project Managers helped relocate displaced tenants, coordinated our team’s efforts, and supervised every phase of the reconstruction process.

Demo plan. Construction plan. Approvals. And permits.
It’s a process that can get bogged down in red tape if you don’t know what you’re doing. Abel’s professional Project Managers know the ins and outs and worked quickly and efficiently to keep the process moving from one phase to another. A demolition plan was developed immediately and presented to city officials for approval, the needs of the architect were prioritized, a local roofing company was contracted for materials, heavy equipment would be needed, so they needed to source companies and schedule delivery to the site. And if all that weren’t enough, a comprehensive timeline was created for the delivery of materials and phases of construction.

78 days from start to finish.
3 days ahead of schedule. And it rained. And rained.
Always expect the unexpected. We did, and like clockwork Hurricane Ophelia blew into town and drenched the area — what we couldn’t have anticipated was 15 days of rain.
Either way, we were prepared. We had installed weatherproof membranes on floors outer walls, the roof — any area that was open to the elements.

Construction included:

• Shoring walls

• Building gable walls in the attic

• Installing floor trusses and sub floors

• Installing lower and upper roof trusses

• Installing roof sheathing and shingles

• And finally, siding

On November 16, 2005, the roof was completed — 3 days ahead of schedule. With the holidays right around the corner, this was great news for the tenants of Rosecliff apartments.