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Fire Log
2005
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“Collapse of the Kellam
Block”
by Jay Pozark
The Fourth of July in Lynn has a reputation for being busy. The year 1933 would be no exception. A bad nor'easter had battered the area on the fourth and fifth of July. A new record was set for fire department responses with 172 calls in 24 hours, forty of which were false. Even little Swampscott was busy with 21 alarms in 48 hours mostly for brush and bonfires, but there was one false alarm. The many alarms in Lynn included an arson fire at 153 South St. and second alarms at 525 Summer St. and CB# 51 for 54 Ontario St, a barn fire. The large number of calls necessitated mutual aid from Swampscott and Revere.
All these runs demanded a great deal from the men and apparatus. At one point Ladder Companies One and Three were both out of service for several hours due to large chunks taken out of their solid rubber tires. Engine Company Eleven was also out of service for a period of time due to a blown pneumatic tire. Neither new or old technology was perfect.
The members had suffered also At the time it was common to detail Firefighters to street patrol to prevent false alarms and bonfires. Private George Wolfendale was injured on fire prevention patrol in a private auto. Worse still was the experience of Hose #4 's crew.
Hose #4 responded to a call for an outside fire. While traveling down Alley St. the wagon struck a 12", x 12" timber placed in a dark spot on the roadway. This had been set as a booby trap by some neighborhood boys. Capt. John H. Day, Privates George Jeffries and , Arthur Austin were injured and the steering gear on the hose wagon was broken.
All in all a busy holiday. But the worst was yet to come.
Early on the morning of Friday, July 7, 1933 the Lynn Fire Dept. would be challenged by a fire which took one life and nearly took many more.
At the corner of Boston and North Federal St. a house was undergoing renovation. The house was two and a half stories in height and the first floor had been occupied for more than 50 years as a grocery store. Along the Boston St. side of the building was a shingle roofed porch which ran the length of the building. On the second floor was a tenement occupied by Mrs. Mary Blair and her family.
The first floor store was being lowered to street level and a second stairway was being added in the rear. Two separate contractors had been fighting over the two jobs getting in each others way. The building department had ordered work stopped because the permit ran out. The structure was wide open on the first floor and supported by 2" X 4" shoring timbers. The building department had ordered the building closed up and made safe before the holiday. In the neighborhood there was much talk that the shoring timbers weren't strong enough.
About 0130 Hours Sgt. John P. Wall and Ptlmn. Roland Hubbard passed by the corner of Boston and Federal Streets on patrol and noticed nothing. A few minutes later people living on Marion and Boston Streets were awakened by shouting. Running towards the noise, two men arrived just in time to see the building envelop in fire and thick smoke. A man and a 12 year old girl, the son and granddaughter of Mrs. Blair, were seen on the porch roof on the Boston St. side. They jumped to the ground. Mrs. Blair’s two daughters were able to escape by the stairs. Mrs. Blair stood by a small window on the second floor unable to get down the narrow stairway which was the regular exit. She had let her son and granddaughter go out first. When her turn came she was overcome by smoke and collapsed. Fred Blair made an unsuccessful attempt to rescue his mother receiving burns to his face and hands in the process. The shouts and cries could be heard as far as Grove and Robinson Streets. A man ran to Federal Square and pulled City Box 615 which was transmitted at 0140 Hours.
Fire companies from the Federal Street Enginehouse arrived to find the first floor heavily involved, with fire through the roof and spreading to the exposures. A second alarm was struck at 0141 Hours. Fearing many people trapped firemen tried to enter the building but were driven back by the hot fire. Efforts shifted to evacuating the surrounding tenements and protecting exposures. The awning and wall of the large block of tenements over stores on the opposite corner of North Federal St. were burning. Across Boston St. at #110 the wall was beginning to ignite. Window glass was cracking from the intense heat. A water curtain was set up. On the right side of the fire building at 6 North Federal St. fire was extending. A handline was stretched and operated which stopped the fire at this point. Eng# 6 stretched and wet 450’ of 2 ˝" hose and played a stream onto the fire. Firemen quickly evacuated more than a dozen families including those from buildings at 431, 435. 439 Boston St. as well as 6 North Federal and 110 Federal streets. Luckily for the firemen there was little wind that night.
With the fire threatening to spread, Chief of Dept. Welch ordered the general alarm struck at 0143 hours. This brought all remaining Lynn apparatus and an engine company from Swampscott.
Fire companies summoned by the general alarm began to arrive and streams of water began to play on the inferno. The extending fire was cut off and a concentrated effort was made on the original fire building. By the time the Swampscott engine company arrived the fire was contained and their service not required so they were returned.
Shortly after 0200 Hours the heavy fire on floor one was knocked down. Hoselines and nozzle tips were reduced and firemen entered the first floor to make a secondary search and start overhaul. Eight men stretched hoselines to the porch roof on the Boston Street side. From the porch roof a forlorn effort was made by four or five other firemen directed by Deputy Chief Joseph Scanlon and District Chief Henry Haddock to find Mrs. Blair. With the protection of the hose streams, the search team entered and located the body of Mrs. Blair. The firemen called for blankets and a stretcher. Gently they wrapped her body in fire department blankets and passed her out to the crew on the roof: On the roof were Lynn Patrolmen Joseph E. Kane and Charles E. Kerrivan waiting with the stretcher to carry her down and take her to the hospital in the police ambulance. Carefully the firemen and policemen placed her body on the stretcher and began to lower her down. It was 0230 Hours.
The striking of the general alarm had brought the curious. Many citizens from all over the city had come to see the fire. Straining their eyes in the dark they looked through the smoke and steam watching the somber group on the roof It must have seemed like a trick of the eyes the building appeared to sag in the middle. Then it just fell. A scream came from. the crowd. Within a moment fourteen firemen were buried in a pile of debris fifteen feet high.
The first to escape were the two police patrolmen who had been near the edge of the porch roof. Standing together were Deputy Chief Scanlon. District Chief Haddock and Lt. Francis Rooney. Luck was fickle that morning as Chief Haddock was buried in the ruins, pinned under a wall. Chief Scanlon and Lt. Rooney escaped without serious injury, landing on their feet, they rushed in to help with rescues. Captain Goodridge had been on the sidewalk under the porch when it collapsed. Now he lay under a section of the wall with his lower body pinned. District Chief Edwin Mills, Captain Whalen, and Privates Eric Johnson, Harold Johnson, William Corbett, Joseph Cavanaugh and William Sexton all went down in the middle of the pile. On the lower floor District Chief Williams and others were knocked down by falling timbers as they tried to escape. Ironically the shoring timbers which had failed now protected many men as the structure collapsed.
Towards the rear of the building, on the side facing #6 North Federal St.. Chief of Department Welch had been on a ground ladder when the collapse occurred. This ladder was against the rear ten feet of the house, the only part left standing. This was another ironic twist. Chief Welch had a similar near miss in 1895. He had been a hoseman playing a stream into the Hutchinson Hardware building . This fire and collapse snuffed out the lives of five of Lynn's Bravest.
The crowd surged torward, firemen, policemen and civilians. All began to lift and dig with the hope of finding people alive. Using axes, hand saws, pry bars and their bare hands the rescuers located and extricated the trapped men one by one.
Thomes Carritte the city electrician had responded on the second alarm. Now he went to the closest fire box and ordered the fire alarm office to strike special signal 82-8282 at 0213 Hours. This summoned the street department with their wagons and equipment. These men came to the aid of their fellow city workers using their knowledge and equipment to help clear the wreckage.
Electrician Carritte then placed a call to the General Electric Co. He requested their help in lighting up the scene. The G.E. sent two large electric searchlights. When they arrived C'arritte had them placed on a building across the street. As the lights were turned on they showed a scene of devastation. A huge pile of boards, shingles, splintered and broken wooden fire department ladders smoldered in the bright light. A lonely line of fire hose snaked it's way into the mound.
Some of the men had been removed and they were receiving first aid. Dr. Worthen of the Red Cross had arrived and he began to treat the rescuers as we!! as the victims.
As word of the tragedy spread, the wives of the trapped firemen began to arrive. Waiting in the crowd they prayed and looked for a familiar face as each man was removed.
Two of the police captains on the scene had quickly ordered all available ambulances in the city to the scene. Both police ambulances and the ambulances of local funeral directors responded. These however were not enough so police cars, private cars and trucks were pressed into service.
At the Lynn Hospital the injured began to arrive. So many came in such a short time no records were kept of the more minor injuries. The hospital activated it's disaster plan and called in staff doctors to help the house physicians. Luckily most of the injuries were not life threatening. Many were back injuries from trying to lift the heavy debris. Most injuries were splinters and cuts. One fireman had the cheek on one side of his face pierced by the end of a ladder spar. Among those injured was Roy Rollinson of Lynn Fire and Police Notification Co., a private watch and salvage service.
Firemen continued the backbreaking work of carefully prying through the debris. When the building collapsed Fireman Corbett was dropped from the second floor into the cellar. He landed on top of the funace and was found with serious back injuries. Finally they located the last trapped man, District Chief Edwin Mills. Mills had been caught by a section of flooring when it came down, a beam had knocked him towards the rear of the building. Now he lay buried beneath it. As the rescuers cut and lifted, Chief Mills spoke and chatted with them.
The last trapped man was removed about 20 minutes after the collapse. However, for more than an hour people waited anxiously while a roll call was conducted. A motorcycle police officer was sent to the hospital to obtain a list of the injured. Finally the roll call was completed about 0400 Hours. The recall was sounded at 0450 Hours.
The Fire Department was satisfied that all the injured had been removed from the pile. The Building Department felt the remains were a serious threat to public safety and instructed that they be removed. The Street Department carted away the debris.
The house at #4 North Federal Street was completely destroyed. Newspapers listed the loss as $5000.00 for the building and $4000.00 to contents. Although there was damage to exposures no loss is listed.
Due to the injuries and the rapid spread of the fire, the State Fire Marshals office was notified and an investigation conducted. Chief Welch did not feel insurance fraud was a possibility. He also stated that he felt the building had it been properly supported would not have collapsed. The cause of the fire was generally felt to have been boys being delinquent.
An example of work at this fire: Eng#6 wet 450' of 2 1/2" hose. They pumped 1 hour and 30 minutes being absent from quarters 1 hour and 44 minutes. All members of the off platoon responded to the second alarm.
A list of those buried and injured. Records conflict on how many were injured and buried in the collapse. One newspaper states fourteen firemen the other fifteen. However, they show only thirteen names. Regardless of which number is correct, one thing stands out. It is unique to the fire service that supervisors and command staff share the same hazards. Of the thirteen men listed, six are officers, three of them chiefs.
District Chief Henry Haddock: Lacerations to face and arms
District Chief Edwin Mills: Bruises to body
District Chief Ernest Williams: Lacerations and bruises to body
Captain Frederick L. Goodridge: Back sprain and contusion to hips
Captain Thomas J. Whalen: Foot pierced by nail
Lieutenant Henry Hayden: Broken fingers and laceration to face
Private Harold Johnson: Back injury and possible internal injuries
Private Eric Johnson: Bruises and lacerations to face and arms
Private Joseph Cavanaugh: Fractures of both feet and contusion to forehead
Private William Corbett: Spine fracture. hip and thigh injuries and arm burns
Private William Sexton: Laceration to eyes and face
Private James O'Brien: Laceration to eyes and right arm
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