Four-alarm fire guts Evergreen Florist
Published on October 24th, 2007
STONEHAM, MA - An institution in Stoneham Square for over 30 years was reduced to a charred husk of a building when Evergreen Florist at 397 Main Street caught fire Tuesday night and raged on for roughly five hours before a collection of over 60 firefighters from seven different cities and towns wrestled it under control.
Stoneham firefighters led by Capt. Scott Webber reported to a fire at Evergreen, the longstanding storefront business at 397 Main Street in Stoneham Square, at roughly 9:22 p.m. Tuesday night and immediately struck a second and third alarm.
A fourth alarm was struck less than 20 minutes later as the fire engulfed the retail storefront and the upstairs apartments.
"We got to the scene and it was a fully involved structure fire," said Stoneham Fire Chief Joe Rolli. "You always have a little bit of fear when you hear there's a fire in the square because of the close proximity of all of the buildings, and this was one of those cases where you're fighting the fire while doing whatever you can to prevent it from spreading to the nearby buildings."
The Stoneham fire crew, with six on-duty firefighters as well as an additional 15 off-duty personnel along with crews from Reading, Woburn, Wakefield, Winchester, Melrose, Medford and Malden arrived at the scene and eventually entered the third floor of the building to battle back the rising flames.
A North Reading crew and a Woburn ladder truck manned the Stoneham Fire Station while the fire raged on in the square.
"We were forced to rip open walls and knock out windows to help ventilate the building and we were able to clear the scene around 1:30 a.m.," said Rolli.
With the Stoneham Theatre resting just beside the Evergreen Florist Building, there was also grave concern for the health and well-being of that Stoneham Square landmark when the flames for the neighboring building actually roared over the theatre's roof and a tiny portion of the front corner of the theatre's top floor caught fire.
"There was very minor involvement in the front corner of the building at the theatre, but we were able to put that out quickly," said Rolli, who added that the theatre suffered smoke and water damage but would likely be open for show time later on this week. "We put up water curtains on the sides of each of the nearby buildings and we just kept watering and hosing down the roofs and sides of those buildings to keep the fire from spreading.
The Theatre management team had this statement on Wednesday morning: "Last evening some our neighbors some suffered a fire. Our thoughts go out to them. Thanks to the rapid response by several of the town fire departments the impact on our theatre was minimal. We anticipate being open for business tomorrow and going forward as usual. Please pardon our appearance while we make minor repairs."
"I can't say enough about the job done by the entire department," added Rolli. "We're obviously short-staffed right now, but it is what it is. The guys did a marvelous job on a very difficult evening. They say in sports that a coach is only as good as the guys in the field playing for them, and the same could be said of a fire chief: we have some great guys in our department that make me look very good."
The cause of the fire is still being investigated by the State Fire Marshall's Office and Rolli acknowledged the difficulty in watching a longtime downtown Stoneham business like Evergreen Florist experience such a traumatic event.
"Everybody from Stoneham knows and has been inside Evergreen Florist and it's a very unfortunate situation," said Rolli. "They're probably going to have to move to another location in the square given the damage involved, and we couldn't allow [Evergreen owner] Pat Flaherty in to salvage anything possible until Wednesday morning because of the danger of the fire reigniting."
A pair of Stoneham firefighters, Jason Galla and Capt. John Scullin, were taken to Winchester Hospital for injuries consistent with smoke inhalation, and Scullin was being admitted to the hospital for further treatment.
There was no one in the building at the time of the Stoneham Fire Department's arrival at the scene, and no one outside the firefighters was injured.
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