Boston on fire : a history of fires and firefighting in Boston by Schorow Stephanie

Author:Schorow, Stephanie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: United States - State & Local - General, History: American, Fires, History - U.S., United States - State & Local - New England, Massachusetts, Fire Science, Fire extinction, Boston, History
Publisher: Beverly, Mass. : Commonwealth Editions
Published: 2003-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

BOSTON ON FIRE

had died just two weeks earlier in a Ere in the Luongo Restaurant in East Boston.

By now the fire department had fifty-three engine companies^ thirty-one ladder companies, three rescue companies, three water towers, and three fireboats. Like all the city's firefighters, the 42-year-old Kenney wondered if some day he, too, would be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice. As he walked from his home in the South End to the Rescue 1 station on Broadway near Washington Street, he passed, as usual, close to the Cocoanut Grove, bordered by Piedmont, Shawmut, and Broadway Streets on the edge of the city's theater and nightclub district. He hardly gave the club a thought.

In East Boston, in the Engine 9 company,. John E Crowley was hoping for a chance to prove himself to the more experienced firefighters. Recently hired, he had worked two-day shifts, and now he would start his first twenty-four-hour rotation. His $33 weekly salary was important for his growing family, but Crowley wanted more than the money The 27-year-old already sensed that he was on the edge of a special community, a kind of brotherhood, bound by honor and dedication. His uncle, Daniel Crowley, was a district chief, but John wanted to win the respect of that group on his own merits, and he knew it wouldn't be easy. Tonight he would learn the running cards, the forms that stipulated which fire companies and what apparatus were to respond to successive fire alarms. As he was puzzling over the notations. Box 1521 signaled a first alarm at 10:20 P.M. Then, almost before the first alarm registered, another alarm from the same box sounded—a third alarm. Bobbie Quirk, of Ladder 2, leaped out of his chair at the sound. "What the hell is going on^" he snapped. "They never skip an alarm." Engine 9 would respond, to cover the station of Engine 7, on East Street, near South Station. The men ran for the engine with an excited but nervous new guy along with them. They arrived at East Street within minutes but were immediately dispatched to the scene itself. The Cocoanut Grove was on fire, and almost every fire company in the city was at or racing to the spot.

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