Distress

Dwayne Cliett is comforted by his neighbor, Alberta Sanders, as fire destroys his home on 52nd Street near Springfield Avenue. The two-alarm blaze got under way at 11:56 a.m. yesterday, and was brought under control an hour later. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries.

Recently my husband and I were driving on Bustleton Avenue, and as we passed the area around Fox Chase Street, my husband exclaimed, "Did you see the sign on the bus?" It said, "Help. Call Police. " There was also a flashing light on top of the bus. We made a turn and tried to catch up to the bus. When it stopped to discharge a passenger, we were able to get in front of the bus and acknowledge to the driver that we had seen his distress signal and would go for help. At that point a police car drove up, and it was no longer necessary for us to be involved.

The American flag outside the home of A. Danielle Rousseau still flies in the distress mode - upside down - but a big step toward righting the banner was taken in City Council yesterday. Councilman Lucien E. Blackwell introduced a bill that would pay Rousseau $100,000 for the faulty renovation of her home that she has blamed on the city and over which she has flipped her flag. A flag flown upside down is a recognized distress signal. And Rousseau and her husband, Jerome Hunter, have been displaying the stars and stripes that way outside their house, in the 4800 block of Chester Avenue, since Jan. 20. They contend that, through a city-administered program, an inept city- approved general contractor five years ago did work on their Southwest Philadelphia home that resulted in problems that have cost $170,000 to correct.

Willingboro Township Council members told a county planning commission representative last night that their suburban community of 38,000 residents remains vibrant and financially healthy, despite the state's decision to label it one of New Jersey's most "distressed" cities. The council vowed early this month to fight the State Planning Commission's report that placed Willingboro in Tier I, the worst category of its seven-tier ranking for identifying statewide development needs.

Distress, said Danielle Rousseau and Jerome Hunter, summed up their feelings as well as any other word. After spending $170,000 to repair damage allegedly done to their Southwest Philadelphia house by a contractor, after losing two lawsuits and having city officials shut doors in their faces for more than six years, Rousseau and Hunter say they are exhausted, angry - and, yes, distressed. So two weeks ago, at the suggestion of the commander of Jerome's American Legion post in Germantown, the couple hung an American flag upside down outside the old Victorian home they share at 48th Street and Chester Avenue.

Windowless and small, the basement office in Cherry Hill somehow resembles a remote weather station, an impression enhanced by logbooks filled with daily entries from South Jersey's emotional hurricane watch. Christmas Eve, 1985. 11:50 p.m. A 27-year-old man has telephoned to say he is in a room filled with friends. All are drunk. Ear-piercing screams fill the background. "He wanted to know what to do," reads Rosemary Bridgeman, director of Ala-Call, a 24-hour hotline for people with alcohol-related problems.

Things are starting to heat up under the circus tent that is the Chicago Bulls traveling show. As the Bulls arrive to play the 76ers at 7:30 tonight at the Spectrum, they are in the most disarray they have been in this season, which is to say not much. Of course, any disarray would pale when compared with that of the Sixers, who are 13-51. But for the Bulls, who have been running with absolute precision this season while winning 57 games, the slightest distress is news. Scottie Pippen, who is averaging 20.7 points per game, is injured and is not expected to make the trip from Chicago.

T HE SADNESS in Obie Batchelor's heart is older than America itself, he said, a bittersweet reminder of all American Indians displaced or slowly stripped of their culture over the centuries. But in 2010, there's no army marching toward the Rankokus Indian Reservation in Burlington County to force the Powhatan Renape Nation off the land there. These days, change comes in the form of code violations, the tribe's own fiscal and personal problems, and a disconnect between a businesslike state government and what Batchelor calls the "Native mind.

The Coast Guard is offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of whoever made a fake distress call reporting an explosion and sinking of a yacht off the New Jersey coast. The call Monday claimed there had been an blast aboard the yacht Blind Date and that 21 people aboard, including seven who had been injured, had taken to life rafts off Sandy Hook. The Coast Guard said a later call reported that three people had died. The Coast Guard joined by law enforcement marine units launched a major search and rescue operation, but officials later determined the call was a hoax when they spotted no wreckage.

Somebody showed Greta Gerwig an early review of Damsels in Distress, the new Whit Stillman lark in which she stars — and in which she leads an ersatz Hollywood musical dance number — and the actress was not happy. "I really love musicals, and I was thrilled that I got to take part in a song-and-dance number," explains Gerwig. "But I actually was upset — it said that no one was very good at dancing or singing, and I was like, well, I think I'm good. I wasn't given a chance to really do it. I got defensive — criticizing my tap dancing and singing!

CLEVELAND - The last time the Phillies came through Ohio, they played three consecutive games without drawing a single walk. They scored four runs. They were swept in three games by the Cincinnati Reds. Two weeks after departing Great American Ball Park, the Phils arrived at Progressive Field in Cleveland and changed things up a bit. After getting beat by a dozen runs by the Indians on Tuesday night, they let Trevor Bauer go wild. Bauer led an Indians pitching staff that issued seven walks to Phillies hitters Wednesday night.

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - A crew member and a rescue vessel operated by a boater assistance service were the focus of a Coast Guard search Tuesday in the Great Egg Harbor Bay after the agency received a distress alert signal, officials said. New Jersey state police were expected to join the search by nightfall for the 45-foot Cape Hatteras, part of the Sea Tow fleet franchise out of Atlantic City, said Petty Officer Cynthia Oldham. The Coast Guard received the distress alert from the boat's emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB)

Let's face it, historic buildings get torn down all the time in Philadelphia, a city with more fine architecture than anyone knows what to do with. But not many of the casualties are under the special protection of the city's Historical Commission. That's what makes the threatened demolition of the Church of the Assumption so troubling. In 2009, the future of the North Philadelphia landmark looked, if not exactly rosy, then quite hopeful. The 19th-century church where the Catholic saint Katharine Drexel was baptized had just earned a place on the commission's selective Historic Register, the strongest safeguard against demolition.

High noon, downtown Camden. The young blond woman staggering along Broadway in ultrashort shorts makes it clear she doesn't want any help. But a block away, Maxine Bennett eagerly waves to the Covenant House van I'm riding in. The privately funded nonprofit agency "really got me what I needed," says Bennett, 22, who on this occasion needs a ride to her Fairview home with daughter, Paris, 1. "Things are getting better," Maxine says as...

The Chester Upland School District has been declared financially distressed by state Education Secretary Ron Tomalis, a step leading to increased state oversight, possible sweeping changes to operations, and the loss of power by the elected school board. In a sharply critical declaration signed Tuesday and made public Wednesday, Tomalis wrote that the struggling 3,400-student Delaware County district has "alarming deficiencies in [its] financial management and operations. " The district, which almost closed its school doors in January after running out of money, "is plagued by serious, systemic, and aggregating financial problems," he added, and the school board "lacks a concrete plan" to handle them.

A PROPOSAL recently passed by the Senate Education Committee that would allow immediate state takeover of four distressed school districts — Chester-Upland, Duquesne, Harrisburg and York — could be interpreted as the state taking last-ditch responsibility for the educational lives of students. We fear the reality, though, makes this move more akin to the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. The madness goes like this: keep cutting funding to public schools, and make sure the lion's share of those cuts fall on the poorest districts.

The Coast Guard is offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of whoever made a fake distress call reporting an explosion and sinking of a yacht off the New Jersey coast. The call Monday claimed there had been an blast aboard the yacht Blind Date and that 21 people aboard, including seven who had been injured, had taken to life rafts off Sandy Hook. The Coast Guard said a later call reported that three people had died. The Coast Guard joined by law enforcement marine units launched a major search and rescue operation, but officials later determined the call was a hoax when they spotted no wreckage.

In the first quarter of 2012, city records show, 3,148 single-family houses were sold in Philadelphia. And nearly one-third of the sellers, 902, were lenders, government agencies, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That number represents an unprecedented level of distressed-home transactions, even when compared with the previous 24 quarters, stretching back through the housing bust to first-quarter 2006. The next-highest quarterly number — 451 foreclosure sales — occurred in first-quarter 2010.

Somebody showed Greta Gerwig an early review of Damsels in Distress, the new Whit Stillman lark in which she stars — and in which she leads an ersatz Hollywood musical dance number — and the actress was not happy. "I really love musicals, and I was thrilled that I got to take part in a song-and-dance number," explains Gerwig. "But I actually was upset — it said that no one was very good at dancing or singing, and I was like, well, I think I'm good. I wasn't given a chance to really do it. I got defensive — criticizing my tap dancing and singing!