Stairs Collapse, Injure Four At Furniture Warehouse Fire
—photo by Robert Dickerson, Cincinnati Post.
Cincinnati fire companies were able to overcome two major obstacles—an out-of-service sprinkler system and a collapsed flight of stairs which prevented interior access to the fire in the upper half of the six-story Solomon House furniture warehouse—and confine a four-alarm fire to a bricked-in fire-resistive staircase enclosure on the building’s west side.
Twelve engine companies, four ladder companies, a heavy-duty rescue unit, two paramedic rescue units and 80 fire fighting personnel responded to the fire, which occurred just after midnight, last Feb. 24. A lieutenant and three fire fighters received second and third-degree burns when the fourth-floor stairs collapsed in the area where they were advancing their first fire line. All were treated and released.
Solomon House is 80 feet long by 96 feet wide, with a 40 by 20-foot penthouse on its wood and asphalt composition roof. The penthouse was over the elevator shaft and contained a sprinkler gravity tank. According to fire officials, the building is about 50 years old and built of heavy timber construction.
Sprinkler system turned off
The building was completely sprinklered with a standard wet system, but the system contained some broken piping, was missing some heads, and had also been turned off at the base of the riser and in the street on Jan. 20—three days after temperatures in the area dipped below zero and wind chill factors measured 40 to 50 degrees below zero.
In addition to the furniture warehouse and showroom, Solomon House housed a real estate and solar heating company. In recent months, however, the furniture business ceased operation. At the time of the fire, two artists used the fifth and sixth floors as studios, Some merchandise had been moved from the sixth floor several weeks before the fire, according to Cincinnati’s fire investigative unit. More merchandise had been moved out from the second floor the day before the fire, they say. The third and fourth floors were vacant.
The building contained an 8 by 15foot brick enclosed fire-resistive area on its west side which extended from the second to the sixth floor and opened out into the penthouse area. From the second to the sixth floors, it also housed an elevator shaft, four flights of wooden stairs and two storage rooms, one about 8 by 4 feet at the front of the building and another about 5 by 8 feet in the rear. Two metal fire doors opened onto the warehouse showroom floor. Wood doors adjoined each storage room to the stairway landing. The stairs and floor were wood.
Cincinnati fire officials have determined the area of fire origin to be in the third-floor stairs landing in the brick enclosed area where a hole burned into the floor just south of the steps. Two metal 5-gallon cans were found here on the third-floor landing and a third can was found in debris in an area directly above on the fourth-floor landing.
Fire officials say it was a hot fire. According to Captain James Gamm of the fire investigative unit, a solder, which melts at about 600 degrees, melted out a crack in a wooden door inside the brick enclosed area.
“We got 600 degrees at the floor level, which would give us about 1800 degrees at the ceiling,” he explained.
The fire was confined to the brick enclosed area, although an insignificant amount of it broke through on the fourth floor on the east wall of the area up in the ceiling where it got between the floors.
Cincinnati’s fire communications center received word of the fire from a female passerby who phoned in the information at 12:19 a.m. Within 2½ minutes, Engine 14, Ladder 7 and the district chief, part of the first-alarm complement, arrived on the scene. Lieutenant Clarence Brinker, Jr., of Engine 14, saw heavy smoke as he approached the building four blocks away. As his company arrived in front of the building, Brinker saw heavy flames showing from two windows on the third and fourth floors and radioed a Code 2, which notified the remaining first-alarm companies—two engines and one ladder company—to continue responding.
Extra alarms, extra fast
District 1 Chief Drury arrived within seconds of the first-in engine and ladder company. It appeared to him that the third through sixth floors were involved and fire was coming from the fourthfloor windows. He called in a Code 3 two minutes after the first alarm, which got him an extra engine company.
“I saw no fire going east of these windows. I saw fire coming out of the fourth-floor windows, but… all of the fire extension was moving vertically at that time and none of it was coming to the left of it,” he said.
Drury had a ladder company knock out the window on the northwest corner of the sixth floor above the fire, with the tip of the 100-foot aerial ladder, to encourage vertical travel. “We didn’t want a substantial backup of heat traveling out onto the floors,” he said.
Five minutes after the first alarm, Drury skipped the second and put in the third alarm, which-called for five engine companies and a ladder company.
“I knew the enclosure was totally involved in fire from the third floor up, and if it wasn’t well protected the fire would move horizontally across the top of the building. Even with ventilation (from the upper story window above the fire) it appeared to roll out and go across the top of the roof. From down on the street, I couldn’t tell whether I was looking at fire rolling across the top of the ceiling on the top floor or across the roof,” said Drury.
Map by Captam Charles Moreton, Cincinnati Fire Dept
As first-arriving engine company, Engine 14’s first decision was to get its water supply and make an interior attack through the front entrance with five sections of 1 ¾ -inch line. The four-man company forced entry into a glass door and advanced its line up to the thirdfloor landing of the enclosed area. The crew noticed no water coming from the sprinkler system.
“We went in with our automatic nozzle, then we hit it with a straight stream—we were trying to make penetration—then we backed it off to about a 60-degree pattern so we could push it out,” Brinker said.
Stairs collapse
Within 10 minutes after they began their advance, all four men were knocked down the stairs to the secondfloor landing by a shower of flaming debris when the fifth to sixth-floor stairs collapsed and fell on the fourth to fifth-floor stairs. They were helped to safety by members of the company going in behind them.
Also responding on the first alarm was Engine 3. Drury ordered that crew to hook up two lines of 2½ -inch hose at the sprinkler intake.
“As soon as Engine 3 started pumping through these two lines, it activated the sprinkler system,” said Drury, adding, “That the system contained broken piping and was missing some heads didn’t render it totally ineffective. The pumper was getting enough water into the sprinkler system that they were running out of water. They couldn’t pump enough to keep the system supplied because of broken piping and because we had a lot of heads off.
Aerial attack
After the stairs collapsed, a safe interior attack from the front of the building became impossible because of the volume of fire at the fourth-floor level and above. To correct this, ladder companies were ordered to put ladder pipes into service both to complete window ventilation throughout the building—because by now there was a heavy buildup of smoke through the uninvolved east portion of the building past the brick enclosed area—and to knock down the fire as much as possible from the outside so an interior attack could be continued.
Ladder 7, positioned in front of the building, raised its aerial to the third through the sixth floors and opened windows with their ladder pipe stream. Ladder 1 accomplished this same task on the upper floors on the west side of the building. Ladder 2 also positioned in front of the building, worked a ladder pipe to control the fire in the penthouse, and later connected a hand line to this ladder pipe and advanced it into the penthouse area to extinguish fire there. Ladder 15, stationed on the east side of the building, towards the rear, raised its ladder pipe to the sixth floor and ventilated, then worked the ladder pipe on the roof fire.
Ground ladders
Ladder companies also provided fire fighters with access to the building’s interior. After the stairs collapsed, fire fighters could gain entry to the upper floors only by therear fire escape and these ground ladders until late in the fire when two additional wood staircases were discovered in the southeast corner of the building.
A total of eight exterior ladders were positioned around the fire building. In addition to the four 100-foot aerial ladders in use, Ladder 7 raised a 55-foot extension ladder in the front of the building in the early stages of the fire, after the stairs collapsed.
Ladder 1 raised a 20-foot straight ladder along with the Engine 5 crew to the roof of a three-story structure adjacent to the fire building. This permitted fire fighters greater access to fourth-floor windows on the west side of the involved area. Other ladders raised were an 18-foot straight ladder from the roof of a two-story building adjacent to the fire building on the west side. Engine 32 raised a 35-foot extension ladder in the rear of the fire building on the east side to alleviate congestion on the rear fire escape.
With four engine companies and two truck companies working the fire in the front, Drury ordered third-alarm companies en route to respond to the rear of the building and advance their fire lines up the fire escape.
5-Inch relay line
Engine 6 laid a 5-inch relay line from Engine 19 to their pumper. Both companies then advanced a 2½-inch line up the fire escape to the third and fourth floors in the west side of the building. Engine 21 took six sections of 2½ -inch line to the fifth floor. Engine 12 advanced a 1 ¾ -inch line to the sixth floor.
Fourth-alarm companies were summoned by Car 3 at 12:36 a.m. and were instructed to assist companies already on the scene rather than to lay new fire lines.
According to Drury, the brick enclosure where the fire originated prevented it from extending through onto the warehouse and showroom floors, “but I would have to say that in conjunction with the brick fire enclosure, it was the lines that came in off the back of the building that were able to put water on the fire on the third and floor floors that … cut the fire off. The fire did extend through the roof area, but it was Ladder 2 which stopped the fire from coming across the roof. Fire lines from the bottom prevented any extension down beyond the point of origin, at the thirdfloor level.”
The fire was officially declared out at 6:15 that morning.
Cincinnati fire officials still list the cause of this fire as undetermined and are continuing their investigation.
