NEW SCOTLAND —A potentially-preventable tragedy struck members of a New Scotland family as four of five lost their lives in an early morning house fire on Saturday. 

On July 8, at about 5:15 a.m., local volunteer fire departments along with sheriff’s deputies and emergency medical technicians from Albany County responded to a 9-1-1 call from an occupant of a rural Normanskill Road home engulfed in flames.

The call came from Rebecca Monterosso, who told a dispatcher that she and four others were trapped, Sheriff Craig Apple told the press this week. Monterosso told the dispatcher she wasn’t sure of the whereabouts of three others, but she was with the youngest occupant, Emily Neander, and they were trapped in an upstairs bedroom with no way to escape because of an air conditioner in the window.

Emily Neander, 5; Arthur Neander, 35; Rebecca Monterosso, 40; and Dale Donato, 64, all died at the scene.

Anthony Thorne, 15, was able to survive by jumping from a second-story story window. Thorne was taken to Albany Medical Center after sustaining minor cuts and bruises. He has since been released. 

There has been an outpouring of goodwill in the days following the July 8 tragedy. A gofundme set up to help pay for funeral costs exceeded its $20,000 goal by nearly $15,000 as of Tuesday evening.  

On Monday, Michelle Thorne, Emily and Anthony’s mother and Arthur Neander’s former wife, took to Facebook to thank everyone for their generosity. 

“Good evening to all,” she wrote. “I hope that through everything my family has gone through and the community has also gone through I hope everyone is finding a way to find a little comfort through this ….”

To those who donated clothing and other gifts to her son, Anthony, “we would like to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts!” Thorne wrote. 

She wrote she could not “thank everyone enough for helping to get through all of this. My son is a true hero for everything he has been through and will continue to go through when it comes to this situation. His father was an amazing man with a heart of gold! He would do anything to help anyone!

“My daughter was our sweet and sassy spit fire who touched many lives around us. Their uncle was truly someone who anyone would be proud to have known. 

“Their father’s girlfriend,” Thorne wrote of Rebecca Monterosso “truly had an amazing heart as well. I know everyone has been continuously asking what my son needs and donating those items to him. In return please do me a favor for those of you that have children? Please hold your children a little extra tighter next time you hug them. Life is never a guarantee and you never know when it can be the last. My hugs with Anthony are an amazing feeling.”

Permit problems

It’s possible this tragedy could have been avoided, according to information from the town’s building inspector.

 Jeremy Cramer, New Scotland’s building inspector, told The Enterprise on Tuesday that there had been evidence of renovations being done in the home, which did not have working smoke or carbon-monoxide detectors, meaning “there was no warning system for them to get out,” and that the work had been done without the proper town permits.

Cramer said, while a report into the cause of the fire has yet to be finalized, fire investigators had indicated to him that seemingly new but undersized electrical wiring running to the second floor had not been used as intended, which caused “it arced and started the house on fire.”

Neither Apple nor Gerald Paris, Albany County’s fire coordinator, responded to requests for comment. 

Cramer said the wire’s coating had on it the date it was manufactured, in 2017. 

“The electrical wire, especially new stuff today, has a date on the outside coating that says when the wire was manufactured,” Cramer said. “There was a lot of wire in there,” it was made in 2017. 

“At some point after that,” Cramer said, “it looked like they had started renovating the house, the bedrooms upstairs, and some other work,” which “they never got any permits from us to do.”

On Wednesday, Apple confirmed to WAMC radio that it was an electrical fire. 

Cramer also noted that the way the decades-old home was built only hastened the blaze.

Cramer said the home had a balloon-framed structure, which means the studs used to frame the building are as much as two to three times longer, anywhere from 16 to 24 feet in length, than the studs used as part of today’s platform-framing technique.

The continuous vertical void between the basement and roof means the “studs act as chimneys during a fire,” Cramer said, and a “fire that started in the basement could very quickly spread to the first, second, and third stories unabated.”

With platform framing, studs extend only one story with each subsequent floor being built directly on top of the prior, thus creating a platform — as well as a fire stop — on which the next story is built.

Revisions made to the state building code in 2020 said when permitted residential “interior alterations occur in existing dwellings, the individual dwelling unit shall be provided with smoke alarms.”

Cramer said there wasn’t any “grandfather[ing] of the state building codes.” Rather, the code says “that, no matter what, you should have them in your house,” Cramer said of smoke alarms.

Unfortunately, Cramer said, no permits were ever approved for the work at 64 Normanskill Road. In fact, he said, “In the entire time that I’ve been in the building department, which was established in 1960, I didn’t see a single permit from them — since 1960.”

Albany County assessment records list the single-family home at 64 Normanskill as being owned by Catherine M. Donato.

Earlier tragedy

Also unfortunate is this isn’t the first time a resident of 64 Normanskill lost their life in such a cruel manner, nor is it the first time the town has dealt with permit non-compliance at Circle Tree Farm. 

In May 2015, Anthony Joseph Donato burned to death in a campfire. 

The day after a Memorial Day party, sheriff’s deputies responded to 21 Altamont-Voorheesville Road in the village where party-goers woke up to find the  57-year-old Donato badly-burned and dead.

“He was able to be identified by a partial fingerprint,” Michael Monteleone, then Chief Deputy of Albany County Sheriff’s Department, told The Enterprise at the time. Monteleone is now executive undersheriff.

In May 2020, Arthur Neander and his mother, Ann Neander — Ann was the sister of Athony Joseph Donato — had their farm stand at the corner of Normanskill and Krumkill roads shut down by the town for four violations of New Scotland’s zoning code. 

Neander was cited and shut down by the town for placing a shed on the property without the required building permit; housing chickens on the site; processing firewood and selling firewood at the stand; and selling retail garden plants on site as well as using the shed as a commercial sales building.

Cramer would later determine the chickens, vegetables, and flowers were not violations of town code, but said the firewood processing and sales were an agribusiness, which is not a permitted use in the zoning district. 

Two years earlier, in 2018, Neander had been before the planning board, seeking a special-use permit for “farming activity personal,” which Neanader said was needed for the chickens on the property and for the firewood being sold there. Cramer said at the time, after that November meeting, the town “gave [Neander] some things we needed back and we never heard back from [her].”

Residents rallied to Ann Neander’s aid and she eventually scored a partial victory when the town’s zoning board of appeals said it had been provided with sufficient evidence to show that the importing, processing, and sale of firewood on the site had been taking place at Circle Tree Farm since before the town code went into effect, and allowed the sale of firewood to continue. 

But the zoning board found there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support the claim that the sale of cut flowers, vegetables, and chicken eggs were pre-existing non-conforming uses on the site, and upheld Cramer’s previous determination.

Jeffrey Baker, who then chaired the zoning board, encouraged Neander to seek a special-use permit for the sale of the flowers, vegetables, and eggs, which Neander, who has since died, told The Enterprise at the time she planned to do. Cramer told The Enterprise this week following that August 2020 meeting, he hasn’t heard anything from anyone associated with Circle Tree Farm since.