Two alarm blaze on William Street
Published on February 25th, 2004
STONEHAM, MA - An off-duty Stoneham firefighter pulled a sleeping woman from the second floor of a rapidly burning William Street home and business -- Town Taxi -- late last Thursday afternoon before the two-alarm blaze swept erratically through the entire structure.
Although one of the two house's occupants sustained first and second degree burns, the person refused medical attention at the scene. No fire fighters were seriously injured.
According to Stoneham Fire Chief Lawrence Lamey, Stoneham Firefighter and Arson Investigator Michael O'Sullivan spotted smoke filtering from 166 William Street while entering the Main Street Stop & Shop located adjacent to the property.
"He was off-duty and came to the fire station to work out. Then on his way home, he stopped at Stop & Shop and assisted the woman out of the house before calling 911," said Lamey of O'Sullivan's actions, adding that the first alarm was pulled at 4:01 pm.
Two minutes after receiving that initial alarm, a second alarm was pulled for mutual aid assistance, drawing the response from four surrounding communities including, the Wakefield, Melrose, Winchester and Reading Fire Departments.
As a crowd of nearly 50 spectators watched the flames lick through a second floor window frame opposite the home's Main Street side, firefighters marched through the property's high sloped lot, erecting ladders and smashing out windows for ventilation.
Within minutes, an axe-wielding firefighter equipped with a gas mask had traversed the house, chopping through the roof with wide-arching swings as he cut another ventilation hole feet from the flame covered window sill.
According to Lamey, the firefighters first ventilated the home so that the wind would push the blaze towards one side of the structure, thus containing it to one area. However, firefighters soon found the fire flaring all over the house in the face of a strong shifting breeze.
"Not only was the wind present, but it was ever shifting. We tried to attack it from the leeward side but it changed on us three times," said Lamey.
The safety officers then shifted to the front of the home, using a ladder to knock out the building's second story windows and smashing in the front door with an axe butt.
Yet as firefighters closed in on the front door, a ball of pluming fire shot through the upper windows in response to fierce bone-chilling wind gusts, the expanding fire extending perhaps three feet from their heads as it charred a few trees on the house's front lawn.
"We took a calculated risk where we knew the wind was coming from the southern side, so we tried to push it out the side of the building and knock it down," recalled Lamey of the new tactical approach.
"Sure enough, as soon as we did it, the wind changed direction and impeded the firefighters trying to get into the building," the fire chief added.
Within 15 minutes, the sky-blue siding covering the front house, which had until then remained relatively unscathed, transformed into a charred fire-eaten mess that sporadically glinted from thin silver flaps of insulation covering. Wary of the unpredictable shifts of the wind and the increasingly dangerous fire behavior that resulted, the fire chief then decided to abandon any attempts to extinguish the blaze from inside the residence.
"In order to get the fire out safely without putting firefighters unnecessarily in danger, we decided to fight it externally...When the fire gets at that point, it's just untenable to get into the structure because the fire had spread up into the rafters," explained Lamey.
But once again firefighters experienced some difficulty in adjusting their tactics as they struggled to gain a foothold on the slippery leaf-covered hill that bordered the property's front entrance. In fact, according to Lamey, the site's geography proved to be a formidable obstacle from the outset, hindering ladder and engine trucks from getting in close proximity to the home.
"Some of the major problems we had with this fire included the topography of the property, which didn't lend us very easy access. There were a lot of trees and shrubs around the perimeter of the building," Lamey remarked.
And the difficulty didn't stop there. As firefighters attacked the blaze with fire hoses positioned on two sides of the building, attempts to knock down the blaze from a third front were delayed by a frozen fire hydrant.
However, after a little help from the Winchester Fire Department, the empty hose soon inflated with a pop as water came from a separate fire hydrant down the road. Then able to fight the blaze from three directions, firefighters finally contained the blaze around 6:30 pm, nearly 2 and 1/2 hours after first responding to the scene.
"The firefighters just did a terrific job under these conditions and it was very fortunate that nobody was seriously injured," said Lamey of the incident, which he characterized as the worst fire Stoneham has experienced this year.
With only six Stoneham firefighters first arriving at the scene, Lamey also emphasized the important role of mutual aid, an ability Stoneham might lose if recommended FY05 budget cuts by Town Administrator David Berry became a reality.
"It's really important to maintain our mutual aid. No city or town can handle large scale incidents with the personnel they have, nevermind the loss of additional resources...You can't reasonably expect that other communities are going to send coverage to your area if you can't give aid back. That's why it's called mutual aid," said Lamey.
"With the type of cuts we're anticipating, with all good conscience and management concepts, if I'm put in that position [being forced to cut 11 firefighters], I can't justify taking one of our two teams out of the area to cover other fires," Lamey added.
Although the fire department does have a call-back system where off-duty firefighters are paged in the event of a large scale emergency, Lamey explained that it's not uncommon for additional personnel to take more than 30 minutes to arrive on scene, as was the case in last Thursday's fire.
"Quite frankly the call back system is inadequate...The system is compounded by economic circumstances where most of our newer staff don't live in the town. Sure it's alright if people live around the corner, but nowadays the call back system is very, very stressed. The mutual aid is really the optimal process to use," the fire chief commented.
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