TURNERS FALLS — 2017’s first sunrise rose over burnt wreckage of the Railroad Salvage mill building on Power Street, bathing firefighters in light, who were still working at the scene of a fire that started more than 24 hours before.
At 10:30 a.m. Sunday, one town firefighter directed a water cannon at the top of a fire engine ladder down through lingering smoke into sizzling hot spots in the building’s black skeleton. Below, a few others manned the pump panel of a second fire truck idled near a state Department of Fire Services Special Operations rehabilitation trailer, and Fire Chief John Zellmann conversed in a huddle with fellow emergency officials.
“The nature of how the roof collapsed created so many voids,” said Fire Department Capt. Brian McCarthy, by way of explaining why firefighters had to stay on-scene for so long.
Usually, McCarthy said the department’s standard operation is to send crews into a building after fire has been extinguished to “overhaul,” or put out hot spots. However, in the case of Saturday’s 2 a.m. fire, “the building was compromised even before the fire. We weren’t going to put anyone in there.”
As a result, emergency crews had to fight fire from the outside — blasting in water with ladder trucks and master streams — which substantially extended the amount of time it took to put out all the flames. From start to finish, Turners Falls firefighters were on-scene.
“They got called around 1:30 a.m., and they’ve been here since,” said Montague Selectman Rich Kuklewicz, who was surveying the scene Sunday morning with Selectman Christopher Boutwell. Boutwell noted, “the fire crews did a great job.”
“They’re still here. That’s a few days of hard work,” said J.D. Keating, who lives near where the fire happened. Sunday morning, he was with his son, Andrew, walking his dog, Tank, past the wreckage. As Keating explained, he woke up early Saturday and saw the fire first-hand.
“I just happened to get up and saw some smoke. It was going by 4:30 a.m.,” Keating said. “It was ripping — hoses, blinking lights. It was very artistic.”
At first, McCarthy said the fire was burning so hot that every firefighter in the department was needed to help out. As the day wore on, crews rotated out to the rehab trailer, eventually switching to 5 hour shifts around 4 p.m. Saturday.
“The physical toll is probably a little more obvious,” the fire captain noted about difficulties firefighters faced during the incident. “The nature of the fire service is you have bursts of energy. At one point you might be doing something relatively low stress. Then, you’re thrown into something.”
“Moving equipment, moving hoses, and then the mental part of it — there’s always a risk of injury, and there’s also the people you’re there for,” McCarthy added.
In addition to equipment owned by the town and other fire departments called in through mutual aid agreements, the state rehabilitation unit was also on scene.
McCarthy said McDonalds in Greenfield and Food City in Turners Falls donated food, along with a few community members who “just came over with a variety of food and drinks — it was unbelievably appreciated.”
You can reach Andy Castillo
at: acastillo@recorder.com