Afterburn

Coatesville struggles to emerge from the ashes.

by Rebecca VanderMeulen

Mark Stehle UPROOTED: After the Coatesville fires claimed her house, Karen Engle abandoned the city in which she'd raised her children.

For most people, seeing the house in which they'd lived for the past 28 years burned to the ground would be an unimaginable nightmare. For Karen Engle, it was a blessing in disguise. By the time a Nov. 12, 2008, arson reduced her Coatesville home to rubble, the neighborhood in which she'd raised her children had lost its allure. It had become a hotbed for violence and vandalism.

"We had gunshots. Somebody shot out, with a gun, my husband's truck window," says Engle, 51. "I'd be afraid of looking out the window when I heard the popping at 12 o'clock at night because I might get shot." The fire offered her a ticket out, and she took it. After Thanksgiving 2009, Engle moved into a mobile home near Honey Brook, 10 miles away on the edge of Amish country.

Between 2007 and 2009, more than 50 blazes ravaged this old steel city, which lies about 40 miles west of Philadelphia. They killed one person — an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor — forced 75 more from their homes and struck fear into Coatesville's roughly 11,000 residents. They heaped more misfortune on a town that had seen plenty (see "Coatesville is Burning," Feb. 12, 2009).

In time, cops rounded up a handful of suspected arsonists: a former assistant fire chief named Robert Tracey Jr.; George Donkewicz, who is accused in Engle's house's arson, the fatal fire that killed Irene Kempest and five other blazes; Leroy McWilliams, who was arrested following a fire he allegedly set in December 2008; Roger Barlow, whose alleged arsons included a strip of 15 row homes on Fleetwood Street; and a 17-year-old who hasn't been named publicly. The fires, contrary to early speculation, weren't the result of gang initiations or vendettas against Coatesville; rather, the alleged arsonists were a hodgepodge of troubled young men. But even before the fires, Coatesville was a place known for inept government and rife with drugs and crime, a warehouse for the poor. Indeed, in a letter City Manager Harry Walker wrote to the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development on Aug. 10, 2009, the widespread dysfunction is laid bare: The town economy is burdened by debt, high taxes and unfavorable labor deals. Perhaps most importantly, he wrote, "As a matter of policy, Coatesville has become the official repository for low income housing in Chester County. "

In the arsonists' wake, however, a number of Coatesville residents are trying to reclaim, and in some cases remake, their city. "A lot of people in Coatesville have this attitude that Coatesville is just the city where the fires were," says City Councilman Martin Eggleston. "We're not just this downtrodden city that will never recover."

In 2008, according to U.S. Justice Department statistics, Coatesville saw 176 violent crimes, three murders and 101 robberies — almost the same crime rate, per capita, as Philadelphia. It is also beset by poverty — about half of the Section 8 housing in Chester County falls in the zip code that covers Coatesville, though Coatesville accounts for only about 2 percent of the county's population. Those conditions don't bode well for any sort of renaissance. What's more, Walker says, after the fires, a number of Coatesville residents left town.

One of those was Eva Billings, a 57-year-old home health care worker. According to police, Leroy McWilliams, then 23, set fire to trash under Billings' porch on Dec. 14, 2008. The blaze engulfed her house, causing $110,000 in damage and destroying everything Billings and her son Mike owned. Three days later, they moved to South Coatesville. "I would not move back there. Not for all the money in China or the world," Billings says. "Coatesville is slowly dying."

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Others still hold out hope. Developer Carl Chetty will begin construction this spring on 84 townhouses by the Riverwalk trail and a 72-unit apartment and condo building on Lincoln Highway. "There's a lot of really great things that are on the cusp of starting," he says. "I believe Coatesville is going to be the next Manayunk."

On the other hand, Philadelphia-based developer Bart Blatstein of Tower Investments backed out of a $200 million residential and retail development two years ago; in addition to the tanking economy, he blames infighting among local leaders about the city's future. "I still think that Coatesville has tremendous potential," he says. "It has great bones."

In a July 8, 2009, letter to Walker, George Cornelius, then the acting secretary of the state's economic development department, detailed numerous problems he saw in Coatesville, including an "unacceptable" crime rate and a failure to capitalize on assets. In his reply, Walker detailed the challenges that have plagued the city for decades: declining employment at the steel mill and Coatesville Veterans Administration Medical Center; the collapse of property values after jobs and people left; and a notorious housing project that was torn down in the 1990s, spreading poor people throughout the city.

The picture he paints is of a city that is, more or less, ungovernable. In December, however, Walker told City Paper that plans to revitalize Coatesville are solidifying. But in early January, the city council voted to place Walker on indefinite leave from the job he's held since 2006. On Jan. 11, the council voted to seek a forensic audit of the city's finances, to determine if any money was misappropriated.

Walker couldn't be reached for comment afterward.

Not all of the arsons have been solved, but Chester County District Attorney Joseph Carroll is confident that all of the arsonists have been caught. Tracey, the former firefighter who admitted setting two March fires, was released in November after 242 days in prison and will spend the next eight years on probation. The four others are in jail awaiting trial.

And, not all of the arson victims plan to leave town. Geneva Thomas never doubted she would return to the Fleetwood Street house she bought 20 years ago. "I've seen when this town was something," she says.

Eggleston says the city won't change until its people's attitude does — positive people need to take control of Coatesville's destiny.

But listening to Billings, the health care worker who departed for South Coatesville, optimism is hard to find.

"It would take a miracle," she says, "a super miracle, to change Coatesville."

(editorial@citypaper.net)