Suspicious fires destroy Columbia neighborhood’s sense of safety. They look to future

A quiet trio of beeps goes off inside the melted interior of 3417 Carver St. The beeps sound like the dying remnants of an alarm clock with no one to answer its call.

On Monday night, the Columbia Fire Department responded to a house fire at the address around 10:30. It was the fourth fire in the past two months in the Booker Washington Heights neighborhood off West Beltline Boulevard. But unlike the other three, a body was found inside the Carver Street home, although authorities have said the fire played no role in the death of Francena Willingham, 68.

Richland County Coroner Gary Watts said Willingham died from a medical condition before the fire started.

Columbia fire officials called the fires suspicious and related. Now, Willingham’s death, along with the fires, have neighborhood residents scared.

Standing in front of Willingham’s burnt-out home, listening to the beeps, is Elliott Willingham. He calls himself a distant relative of the woman who used to live in the stone-facade house.

He said Francena Willingham lived in the house most of her life. That’s as deep as he’ll go about his blood kin before he shakes his head and looks into the boarded-up, fire-gutted remains of the home.

“It’s difficult right now,” he says. “It’s tragic.”

Elliott can’t explain why he felt like he had to come back and see his relative’s former home. He says he’s checking on the old neighborhood he came up in as a teenager and the house of his kin — “making sure it’s in order,” he says.

For some residents past and present, Booker Washington Heights is not in order. With the string of fires and the most recent deadly blaze, fear and frustration permeates the streets of Booker Washington Heights.

Stones laid in the past

In April, a house on Beaumont Avenue in Booker Washington Heights burned to just a skeleton of itself. On May 5, a fire at the same address wrecked a detached garage in the backyard. A third blaze tore through another home on Beaumont just last week. None of those houses were occupied and nobody was injured, according to Columbia Fire Department Chief Aubrey Jenkins.

“Folk are sleeping with all lights on, and they are on edge at the sound of leaves rustling,” says Regina E. Williams, president of the Booker Washington Heights Neighborhood Association. “Some men were sitting on porches protecting property.”

“We are worried,” a woman on Beaumont Street says. She doesn’t want to give her name. “It’s scary.”

An investigation of those three fires is underway, Jenkins says, and the department is treating the fourth deadly fire as a related incident. He calls the fires “suspicious,” but doesn’t call the incidents arson, yet. Still, Aubrey says there’s no other reason for these fires to start unless someone started them.

“We’re looking at it and hoping to catch whoever done it,” Jenkins says.

On Tuesday, Williams went before Columbia City Council and gave a somber plea for assistance. “Someone is moving in the darkness of our neighborhood,” she told council.

Aaron Davis has seen what goes on in the dark of Booker Washington Heights.

“With the area, it’s got a lot of activities going on,” Davis says.

He’s seen drug crimes and heard gunshots in the neighborhood. Now with the fire on his street and the three others nearby, he’s reconsidering the move to Booker Washington Heights that he made with his wife and children. They’ve lived in the neighborhood for a month.

“It’s all about keeping about the family safe,” Davis says

He’s not sure he can do that in Booker Washington Heights. As he looks around the neighborhood and sees abandoned houses, he doesn’t see people respecting the place they live.

“If you respect your neighborhood, your neighborhood will respect you,” Davis says. “Have pride in it, keep it clean.”

Williams said Francena Willingham respected Booker Washington Heights and wouldn’t let go of the pride the community once knew.

Willingham’s father laid the stones that built her house in 1960, Williams told City Council, and even though her brother pleaded with her to move, Willingham chose to stay.

“Living in that neighborhood, she knew the importance of maintaining that history,” Williams says. “She loved where she lived.”

Abandoned

Elliott Willingham also loved the old neighborhood he knew. He grew up as a teenager riding bikes through Booker Washington Heights in the 1960s. During the summer, he and his friends might go to a pool that wasn’t too far away. Today, it’s a community in transition, he says.

“It was a regular middle-class neighborhood,” he says. Now, there are “a lot more vacant lots, vacant houses, boarded-up houses.”

In the 1960s, homeowners populated Booker Washington Heights. Now, Willingham says he sees renters and boarded or vacant dwellings belonging to absentee landlords who don’t care for the homes like previous homeowners. That may be a factor in the homes being burned, he said.

Williams also brought this idea up to City Council. She called the abandoned houses of absentee landlords “nuisances.”

“I don’t know who’s benefiting from these fires,” she said. “I know that once these fires occur, the houses are razed and you have the land.”

Davis, who recently moved into the neighborhood, also believes the empty residences are an issue. On either side of his home are vacant houses. He’s seen people taking shelter in what he believes to be neglected and dangerous places.

“People are just letting houses sit, and they’re drying out,” Davis says. “Some of them are trying to remodel, but they’re not doing the outside. They’re old houses. They don’t last long if someone drops a match or drops a cigarette.”

From fires to rebuilt

Carl Morris, 62, is one of the community’s new renters. On a day when storm clouds rolled over Columbia and a stiff breeze tossed around the trees on Beaumont Avenue in Booker Washington Heights, Morris sat on his porch with a fifth of Seagram’s vodka, a Bud Light and his door open with R&B music coming from the inside.

He moved to the house he’s staying in a week ago, but he’s been living in various parts of the neighborhood since the 1980s, he says. Since then, he’s seen changes that he can’t call good.

“I’m old school,” Morris says. “I don’t see old school around here anymore.”

People, especially “these young folk,” don’t care to be part Booker Washington Heights like they used to, he said, and that’s why a person might burn the houses.

“I hope no one will set this one on fire,” he says about the place he’s renting.

For Elliott Willingham, the life he knew in Booker Washington Heights appears faded. Standing in front of the remnants of Francena Willingham’s house, he says, “It’s hard to say if it gets rebuilt.”

Williams can envision a rebuilding of the neighborhood.

She asked City Council to study putting in better lighting and cameras in Booker Washington Heights. She asked that the city help board up vacant houses to keep those structures safer. She told the council members that neighborhood leaders are working with a prominent local historian of African-American culture to preserve the community’s history.

“We are positioned to be on the positive side of change,” Williams said.

This story was originally published June 21, 2018 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Suspicious fires destroy Columbia neighborhood’s sense of safety. They look to future."