Note from the author: this excerpt was removed entirely from this blog. We have beefed up security and updated this blog to remove the repetitive and edited content on January 1, 2023, to be sure that all original content is restored to its original publishing.

When I settled on my first building, in the interest of full disclosure, the previous owner informed me that they had trouble with the owner of the neighboring building, Hugh Burgess. They explained that there was termite damage to the neighboring building (I will call this the Burgess building for easy reference from this point forward). And that the roofline had crumbled to a point to leave a gap between the two of our buildings where water was entering and damaging both buildings.

The previous owner said that they tried everything, and they could not get Hugh Burgess to do anything to repair his building. When I moved in, my guys created a gutter to redirect the water, which Burgess removed and graciously dropped onto my back stoop. The repair that followed was more permanent and involved bricks and mortar, forcing Burgess to repair his side.

When I contacted Hugh Burgess, I offered to buy his building which was in an unbelievable state of disrepair. He explained that I could buy his building if I paid the amount he expected at the sale after income taxes. In other words, he wanted two million dollars for a building in ruins and was shortly after that condemned.

While this photograph was taken “post-flood,” it 100% accurately represents what it looked like BEFORE the flood; just imagine a dirt floor without all the boulders all over it. In addition, there were 2×4’s strategically placed to hold the warped floorboards from above lodged into place and settled into the dirt floor.

The Burgess Building was in a state of disrepair. The front foundation wall was both bulging and crumbling. Despite a few lame “renovations,” the Burgess Building included a basement with a dirt floor. That two-hour firewall that Adolphe Huriaux required of us in my reconstruction project, which was required on all three floors of my building, somehow was not a requirement of the Burgess family on any floor.

They weren’t required to put walls on their side of the building. Their idea of structural support involved adding a 2×4 under the floor joist and onto the dirt floor.

Burgess, a retired attorney who served in the house of delegates known to “advance environmental causes” was likely a member of the same club that Peter Ruff and other characters of this story belonged.

A town where Fire Marshals don’t have any pull

I called the fire marshal. He visited. He coyly explained that there was nothing he could do. In a city that seemed to be managed by fear-mongers and worker-bees faking positions of authority, this guy who was IN a position of authority could not do a single thing about the condition of, and lack of firewall in the Burgess Building, which was under construction, and had already gone through several rounds of renovation– yet never required to have a firewall on any floor. Or any dividing wall in the basement level.

I could SEE THE OUTSIDE through the basement of this project under construction, even when that construction was completed.

Had there been a two-foot-deep wall, with special fire-resistant insulation, when the weak and crumbling and bulging foundation of the Burgess Building gave way to the water main break, it would have helped to prevent the crumbled foundation from completely cutting through and destroying both of my buildings.

Pictured below is the other side of my furnace room. When the Burgess Building’s previously condemned foundation, which was never appropriately repaired, gave way and decimated my furnace systems, it turned the furnaces into shrapnel which then upended the entire lower level of my building, turning the kitchen upside down and traveling with such a rate of force that the entire back side of both buildings ultimately gave way and disintegrated.

Looking at the image below, please note that only one building on the street completely lost its foundation. If you had knowledge that this same building was condemned for its bulging and disintegrating foundation (among other issues), and you connect the dots between this view and the images above, imagine the force with which the Burgess Building condemned foundation traveled through both of my buildings, leaving it irreparable.