NFPA Journal - Fall 2023 - 80

Looking Back
FIRE INCIDENTS AND
OTHER NOTABLE EVENTS
FROM SAFETY HISTORY
A view of the 1973 conflagration
in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
The fire would eventually
destroy 18 city blocks and
nearly 300 buildings.
homeless. Calls for fire-safety
reform were mostly ignored,
and by 1910 Chelsea led the
nation in loss of property
through fire. It seemed only a
matter of time until the next
devastating conflagration.
On October 14, 1973, shortly
before 4 p.m., a building fire
was reported from the same
rag district alarm box that
had been pulled at the start
of the 1908 blaze. The fire was
already established when firefighters
arrived; it jumped the
street minutes later, pushed
CHELSEA
FIRESTORM
50 YEARS AFTER FIRE RESHAPED
A MASSACHUSETTS CITY
By Scott Sutherland
F
or the better part of a century,
starting in the 1870s, the city of
Chelsea, Massachusetts, made
its name as the region's salvage
capital. Along with neighboring
Boston, Chelsea had become an industrial hub
throughout the 1800s. That complexion changed
following the Great Boston Fire of 1872, when
Boston implemented a series of safety codes;
the city's salvaged-goods dealers claimed they
couldn't meet the new requirements, and many
moved their operations to Chelsea. Dealers in
cast-off textiles, paper, and scrap metal proliferated,
and a thriving " rag district " emerged in
an area already packed with factories and an
assortment of housing. Flush with jobs, Chelsea
became the country's most densely populated city
of its size, a feature that shaped a 1908 rag district
conflagration that killed 18 and left 17,000
80 | NFPA JOURNAL * FALL 2023
by warm, windy conditions and a wealth of available fuel. The city's salvage
trade had declined, but many buildings with heavy fire loads remained,
including some with waste paper stacked four stories high. Building by building,
street by street, the fire spread rapidly. Fire raced through backyards,
igniting the wooden porches of homes. As the blaze expanded, the radiant
heat increased until buildings 100 feet from the fire spontaneously exploded.
Fist-sized embers blew beyond the fire line, igniting blazes behind firefighters.
By 6 p.m. the blaze had become a firestorm. An immense thermal column
drew in fresh air at ground level, generating winds of more than 100 mph.
Heavy debris sailed down streets, endangering firefighters and other responders.
A fire crew from a neighboring community abandoned its engine to avoid
becoming trapped. Firefighters struggled with a water supply that was inadequate
to feed the master streams; a system of hose lines and pumps was set
up to relay water from more than a mile away. There was no common radio
frequency for mutual aid companies to communicate with each other directly.
Firefighters pressed on. From a helicopter, Chelsea's fire chief outlined a plan
to halt the fire's advance: create a buffer of several blocks that would be sacrificed
to help firefighters mount a counterattack. The plan worked. Five hours after it
began, the fire's progress was finally halted, though blowing sparks continued to
ignite fires around the city throughout the night. Extinguishment took three days.
Eighteen city blocks and nearly 300 buildings were destroyed. More than 1,100
people were left homeless. An estimated 2,000 firefighters from more than 100
departments responded. Recovery costs were estimated at $40 million, or more
than $260 million in today's dollars. No fatalities were reported.
The following May, another fire destroyed two city blocks of the rag district.
By then, efforts were underway to better enforce building safety codes in the
city and improve mutual aid efforts among area fire departments.
THE NFPA LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE holds a rich collection of books, reports, and photographs that
document important moments in fire history. To provide better electronic access for researchers and
to preserve our unique archival holdings, work has begun to digitize the files of the Fire Record Department,
the original NFPA department responsible for collecting and analyzing information and compiling
statistics about key fires and other events. The incidents featured in " Looking Back " are drawn from this
collection and will eventually be part of NFPA's online archive. For information, visit nfpa.org/library.
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http://www.nfpa.org/library

NFPA Journal - Fall 2023

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