3 Factories, 5 Houses Destroyed By Fast-Spreading Incendiary Fire

3 Factories, 5 Houses Destroyed By Fast-Spreading Incendiary Fire

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Aerial photo by Richard Miller, plane piloted by Don Nowicki

AMERICAS MALIGNANT CRIME

A fast-spreading incendiary fire caused by two boys swept through two blocks of Paterson, N. J., on April 29, destroying three factories and five wood-frame houses. The blaze damaged three other factories, three houses and a lumberyard. The fire was the worst experienced in Paterson since the conflagration of 1902, when over 500 buildings were lost.

The fire started at 29-45 Fulton Street, a four-story, 75 X 300-foot building of mill construction. The first floor was occupied by the Quality Printing Company and the upper floors were vacant. The building had a sprinkler system, but water service had been discontinued by the owner.

A box alarm was received at 5:31 p.m. First-arriving units found heavy fire conditions on the first floor and spreading up a stairway to the fourth floor. Deputy Chief Jesse McCavitt ordered two turret pipes into operation in an effort to stop the fast fire spread. Additional alarms were quickly sounded with a second at 5:36 p.m., a third at 5:39 p.m., a fourth at 5:40 p.m. and a general alarm at 5:42 p.m. Mutual aid was requested at 5:47 p.m. and a total recall of all off-duty Paterson firemen was made at 5:48 p.m.

Flames engulf apparatus

While Engines 2 and 5 were operating heavy streams from turret pipes, a flashover occurred with explosive force on all four floors. A conflagration-type horizontal flame spread engulfed two pumpers and a chiefs car. All means of driving the vehicles to safety were blocked by flames and radiant heat. One was a newly delivered 1250-gpm pumper. This piece’s diesel engine ran and its red lights continued to flash throughout the night. When the fire was under control, the captain of that pumper shut off the diesel and the lights.

At least a dozen fire fighters had to run for their lives and were trapped for a while in a mill yard blocked by a 20foot brick wall and chain link fence. The fire fighters didn’t panic. Instead, they were regrouped by experienced fire fighters into a team that by sheer manpower bent a 3-inch steel fence post, enabling them to crawl to safety.

With the first alarm contingent suffering a severe setback, the fire spread fast in all directions, completely overwhelming and destroying five adjacent wood-frame houses. Exposures were seriously threatened on all fronts and the potential for a conflagration was great.

In fact, many fire fighters thought they were experiencing their first conflagration. They were worried about a lumberyard and several large five-story textile mills directly at their backs and block after block of three and four-story frame tenements being showered with flying brands.

Master streams ring fire

Companies arriving on the greater alarms set up master streams and water curtains around the perimeter in an effort to contain the fire to the buildings already involved. Secondary lines were established to cope with the problem of flying brands, which had already set numerous fires in the Center Lumber Company, a large lumberyard, and several mills only a block away.

Fire fighters had one break, however, and that was where the main line of the Erie and Lackawanna Railroad, which ran parallel to Straight Street, was on a 15-foot-high earth embankment. This formed a natural fire break and provided greater space for safe placement of apparatus on the fireground.

It also supplied a good vantage point to view the fire for the passengers on the long commuter train that was forced to halt because of trees and railroad ties burning along the tracks. After an hour delay, the train was guided through the dense smoke and flying embers by fire fighters positioned along the tracks. Other trains were rerouted away from the fire area.

The fire jumped Fulton Street to a four-story textile warehouse, which became fully involved within minutes. The six-story National Malt Company building, in which millions of pounds of grain were stored, was in the direct path of the convection wave. It was at this point, at Ann Street, that a determined stand was made to stop the fire before it could spread out of control through the high-value district of the city.

Paterson Engine 11 and Elmwood Park Engine 1 supplied Hawthorne and Haledon’s aerial ladder pipes, which set up an effective water curtain. Engine 6 pumped two lines into the sprinkler Siamese connection to the National Malt building and also supplied a deluge set. This combined effort by four different departments working together in the best traditions of the fire service made a spectacular stop.

The Paterson Fire Department mutual aid plan was automatically placed in action on the fourth alarm and was most effective. Some 400 fire fighters fought the fire. Paterson’s 19 companies were augmented by departments from Clifton, Passaic, Hawthorne, Haledon, Prospect Park, Elmwood Park, Totowa, West Paterson, Little Falls and Paramus. Other units from some of these same cities covered Paterson fire stations and a number of them responded to 11 other working fires in the city that night.

Intensity of fire makes master streams look line a futile gesture.

Photos by Edward Cody.

Below are the two paterson pumpers that were caught in a sudden burst of flame

Coordinating radio base

Because some of these fire departments operate on different radio bands, a coordinating radio station was set up to ensure radio communications for all. This was an operation planned long ago which was set up through the efforts of the Warner Engineering Corporation and the Paterson Fire Department. The base station was operated in the Paterson Fire Department. Portable radios were effectively used to coordinate operations among the fire, police and ambulance services.

The fire was called under control at 3:30 a.m. Units were kept at the scene for several days to wet down baled waste paper stock in one warehouse. In the National Malt Company building, there was a danger of spontaneous heating of large quantities of grain wet by the sprinklers that had operated during the fire. This problem was solved when the Public Service Electric Power Company supplied emergency electric lines to the grain conveyors, facilitating the movement and drying of the grain.

Due to the unusually fast flame spread and the intensity of the heat given off by the fire during the first few minutes after the arrival of the fire department, it was suspected that some form of an accelerant was present in the building. Paterson fire fighters have many years experience with fires involving old mill construction type textile factories, and to them this was an abnormally fast spreading fire.

Investigation launched

An extensive investigation was initiated by the fire department and was joined by local police, the Passaic County prosecutor’s office and the New Jersey State Police. Records of a dozen corporations were searched in an effort to establish a motive or a suspect. Many leads were checked in an effort to eliminate all accidental causes of the fire, and it was one of these leads that broke the case.

Two neighborhood youths, who were playing near the National Malt Company building, told a fire fighter on the night of the blaze that they saw two boys running from the building. Two Paterson detectives, John Rafferty and Thomas Hennion, both with enviable records for arson arrests, found two city boys, 11 and 12 years old, who admitted being responsible for the fire. They were charged with juvenile delinquency.

The boys told the detectives that the fire was started by firecrackers they set off in the old textile mill. They said that the fire spread rapidly across the floor that had been soaked with oil by leaking equipment stored in the mill.

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