NFPA Journal - November/December 2019 - 33

the fire. Despite the heavy smoke gushing from the rooftop
vent, the air was clear throughout much of the building, or
showed only faint wisps of smoke.
What firefighters didn't realize was that the blaze had
been going for as much as an hour or more by the time they
arrived, and the fortress-like building had concealed how
developed and violent the fire had become. An interior fire
wall that divided the building in two also made it difficult for
some crews to assess the severity of the blaze. Investigators
later determined that a homeless couple had knocked over
a candle on the second floor, starting a fire in clothes and
other belongings. They apparently tried but failed to put the
fire out, and left the building without reporting it. Instead,
they walked to a nearby music store and listened to CDs.
When firefighters on the second floor located the fire at
6:22 p.m., it was roaring. Some of the men were concerned
by the fire's behavior; doors that had been opened around
the building, along with the rooftop vent at the top of the
elevator shaft, were causing the fire to race toward the elevators, with smoke and heat being sucked higher into the
structure. The cold storage building, fueled by its lethal
layers of insulation, was becoming a giant stove. Four hoses
were on the fire, but they hardly put a dent in it. Within minutes, conditions inside much of the building deteriorated;
dense, acrid black smoke suddenly descended through sections of the floors and stairwells, collapsing on itself, blotting
out everything. A third alarm was called at 6:42 p.m., and
interior command ordered everyone down for a head count.
But the momentum had already shifted. At 6:47 p.m., two
firefighters radioed that they were lost somewhere high in
the building-investigators later determined it was the fifth
floor-and couldn't find their way out. Firefighters in teams
of two launched a search, even as fire conditions continued to worsen, and a fourth alarm was called at 6:54 p.m.
Around 7:10 p.m., one of the search teams lost its way on the
fifth floor. Another head count was called at 7:24 p.m., with
some of the search teams barely making it out as the situation worsened. The head count revealed a grim surprise;
six firefighters, not four, were now missing-two more had
entered the building and joined the search efforts and they,
too, had become lost in the darkness and chaos of the erupting building. A fifth alarm was called at 7:29 p.m. The four
missing searchers were radioed for the final time at 7:48 p.m.
There was no response.
A minute later, a crew still inside radioed that it feared a
building collapse. Everyone was ordered out at 8 p.m., and
the operation changed from an offensive attack, including
search and rescue, to a defensive attack. The building was
becoming an inferno; the temperature in one section would
be measured at 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Fire blasted from
the rooftop vent 100 feet into the night sky.
WFD hadn't experienced a line-of-duty death since 1962.
At the time of the cold storage fire, the six fatalities were
the most suffered in a non-wildfire event by a fire department in the US since 1988. The cold storage fire was the first
structure fire in the nation's history with six or more firefighter fatalities where contributing factors did not include a

An archival photograph from 1957 showing the block-like
Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. building.
By 1999, what few windows existed in the six-story
building had been boarded over. The floors consisted
of maze-like labyrinths of old food-storage lockers, and
wayfinding was nonexistent. On the evening of the fire,
incident command radioed central dispatch asking
for any available information on the building, but none
was ever found or received.

There were few windows in
the building, and most had
been boarded over. Most of
the floors were mazes of
storage lockers; wayfinding
was nonexistent, and even
cold-storage employees had
routinely gotten lost in the
building. There were no fire
alarm or sprinkler systems.

N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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NFPA Journal - November/December 2019

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