13 years later, Worcester fire teaches lessons, reminds of danger faced by firefighters

WORCESTER, Mass. (WWLP) - It has been 13 years since a massive fire in a Worcester warehouse killed six city firefighters, and more than a decade later, a lot has changed in the way firefighters respond to emergencies.

THE FIRE

On December 3, 1999, a driver on Interstate 290 spotted smoke coming from the roof of the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Company; a more than 90 year-old, abandoned six story building at Franklin and Arctic Streets. 30 firefighters were called to the area at first, with an additional 12 arriving soon afterward. Firefighters, who were trying to put out the fire from the inside of the building, soon learned that two homeless people had been living in the warehouse.

A team of firefighters went upstairs to look for the homeless people, who they believed may still have been trapped inside. The firefighters became lost in the dark, maze-like interior of the highly flammable building, and began running out of air while on the 5th floor, far from the only exit.

The warehouse was heavily insulated with an 18 inch-thick hodgepodge of highly-flammable foams and tar-soaked cork, which provided plenty of fuel for the fire. The fire was further fed by the huge expanses of open spaces contained in the warehouse, and by a huge ventilation shaft created when firefighters cleaned-out the elevator canopy on the building’s roof. To make matters worse, the building’s utilities had been cut off, and firefighters were battling the flames completely in the dark, with no active sprinkler system to assist them.

Under those conditions and unable to escape for 45 minutes, six Worcester firefighters- Paul Brotherton, Jeremiah Lucey, Thomas Spencer, Timothy Jackson, James Lyons, and Joseph McGuirk- died in the fire.

The two homeless people who started the fire through a candle accident had exited shortly after it began- never having notified the fire department. Investigators have concluded that the fire had been burning for at least 25 minutes before it was first noticed and reported to the department.

WHAT HAS CHANGED

Fire departments have much more widely applied a system of placards to put on abandoned buildings. These placards warn firefighters on arrival of the risks of entering a given abandoned building during a fire. Additionally, the advance of technology has allowed fire departments to have more information about given buildings readily available.

More consideration is expected when it comes to firefighter safety. Worcester, for example, now assigns a safety officer when they begin to fight a fire, with the officer’s job being to make sure all personnel are accounted-for.
More fire departments also use thermal imaging cameras, which are extremely helpful to those trying to put out fires in the dark. While such a camera was in use at the time of the Worcester fire, it malfunctioned. Technology has since improved.

Still, 13 years on, firefighters are still killed in the line of duty far too often. In 2007, nine firefighters in Charleston, South Carolina were killed when a burning furniture store collapsed.