MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“Can home explosion be wake-up call?”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, August 19, 2012
Ron Fried said it best.
“Plumbers need to be licensed — and as far as I know, water doesn’t explode.”
Fried, a novelist and television producer with a new house in Greenport, was reacting to the news of a propane explosion that leveled a house in Brentwood, killing a toddler and injuring 17 others.
Fried and his wife, the writer Lorraine Kreahling, used to have a very old house in Greenport. It was built in 1830. On Valentine’s Day in 2006, their beloved historic clapboard house was destroyed in a propane-gas explosion. Both of them were at home. They still can’t explain how no one was killed.
“We both said when it happened, ‘The next time, a child could die,’ ” Fried said.
As the couple began rebuilding their house, they got busy trying to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.
Fried wrote a piece in Newsday arguing that propane installers should be licensed all across New York State. New Hampshire had Amilia’s Law, named for a child who had been killed in a propane explosion, requiring strict licensing. And in 2008, then-Assemb. Marc Alessi introduced a licensing bill in Albany, which got exactly nowhere.
“What I was told,” Fried said, “was that the propane lobby was just too strong.”
Some municipalities, Brentwood among them, do have regulations requiring licensed plumbers be involved to some extent. How far regulations go, how common they are, how strictly
they are enforced and what impact they had in this case — these are topics for much serious study.
So will the latest blast and the death of 18-month-old Rah-quan Palmer tighten propane rules throughout Long Island and across New York State?
Fried is far from certain.
“I’m not even sure that licensing would fix the problem,” Fried said. “Maybe annual inspections should also be required. I just have the feeling we’ve been here before.”
HOME SWEET GONE
- Kid with matches
- Hungry termites
- Creeping mold
- Gathering radon
- Seeping carbon monoxide
THE NEWS IN SONG
It was far better as euphemism
Talking Heads
“Burning Down the House”
ASKED AND UNANSWERED
Isn’t Tim Bishop a life-long Long Islander? The Suffolk County congressman is only now discovering that some parents can be a little high-strung around bar-mitzvah time?…Doesn’t Gurney’s lifeguard Christian Westergard know how rare shark attacks are? Why didn’t he mention that to the five-foot 
white shark that knocked him off his surfboard on Tuesday afternoon?…Congrats to Hofstra for snagging the Oct. 16 Obama-Romney town meeting. But who let Centre College in Danville, Kentucky grab this year’s real train wreck, Biden-Ryan on Oct. 11?…Which Lindenhurst High science teacher first told Joseph Sikorski and Michael Calomino about Nikola Tesla? Fragments from Olympus, the alums’ new movie about the FBI’s obsession with the radio pioneer, will be shot in part at Tesla’s Wardenclyffe 
lab in Shoreham…What got Portuguese on the foreign-language course list at Mineola High? The bustling immigrant community or a sudden pivot toward the 2016 Olympics in Rio?…What about this solution to the bad-Batman-joke-in-class controversy at the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point? Professor Gregory Sullivan apologizes for making a bad joke in class?…Why did Raymond Roth bother faking his own death? Why didn’t he just say nothing – and leave his Massapequa life behind?..What’s worse than the Blue Crabs taking six straight from the Ducks? How ’bout the relentless gloating from Maryland? “Owning Long Island,” one Crab-y headline declared.
LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK
ALI KRAMER
Long Island’s got talent, young talent especially. But how many burgeoning singer
-songwriters have been touring local day camps for the March of Dimes? Seventeen-year-old Ali Kramer, who’s been getting real buzz on the club and youth-concert circuit, has performed a string of volunteer shows at Camp Driftwood, Camp Robin Hood and other LI camps, mixing her pop originals and covers with moving talk about the health of mothers and their babies. “I am so happy my music can benefit such a worthy organization,” Ali said. “What can be better than giving babies a healthy start?” For those not attending camp this summer, Ali is on the side stage Tuesday at the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater with her producer, Greg Raposo. March of Dimes Team Youth Celebrity Ambassador Kelly Clarkson and The Fray are headlining.
E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican
Related posts
