Atlanta Fire Destroys 7-Story Building, Ruins 9th Floor of Exposure
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Photo by Darrel Roberts
A seven-story brick and wood joist office building was destroyed and the ninth floor of a 12-story office building was burned out by a fire on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Ga.
The fire, of undetermined cause, started in Loew’s Grand Theater Building, a 96 X 96-foot office building with a passageway to the 118 X 180-foot building housing the theater where the movie of Atlantan Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” was premiered. The fire was kept out of the theater.
The first alarm for Loew’s Grand Theater Building, built in 1893 as an opera house, was from a street box at 2:45 p.m. last January 30. Upon his arrival, Chief Jack Hood of the 1st Battalion saw flames coming out the fourth-floor windows on the side of Loew’s and he ordered his companies, Engines 4, 6 and 11 and Ladders 1 and 4 to start an interior attack.
Broken sprinkler riser
All three engines took hydrants and Engine 11 pumped into both the sprinkler and standpipe Siameses. Unfortunately, it was not known that the wet-pipe sprinkler riser had frozen and burst so the water pumped into that Siamese flooded the basement. A demolition permit for the building was to go into effect two days later, February 1, and the owner had dropped the sprinkler system supervision service. Because the same engine was pumping into both the damaged sprinkler system and the standpipe system, the standpipe riser was not getting the amount of water it should have.
Ladder 4 laddered the south side of the fire building while Ladder 1 raised its aerial in the 15-foot-wide Banks Place on the north side. Ladder 1 rescued a podiatrist, the last remaining tenant, and his assistant from a seventh-floor window and Hood took one man on the third floor down the rear fire escape.
Both 1 1/2 and 2 1/2-inch donut rolls were carried up the stairs and attached to the standpipe.
Fire goes up light shaft
The initial size-up showed fire on both the third and fourth floors. Unknown to fire fighters inside, the fire had gained access to a light shaft and flames were rising above the roof. This column of fire was to spell doom for Loew’s and very early in the fire, radiant heat was endangering the Continental Insurance Building to the north.
The flames at the roof were not yet apparent from the street, no was the heat effect on the insurance tower 15 feet across the alley. Photos taken from a nearby high-rise showed flames rising from the roof while second-alarm companies were setting up.
Fire was found in rooms on both sides of the hallway on the third floor, but it was not burning in the hall itself. When water was applied to the fire, it seemed to intensify the flame. Hood noted a popping sound in the involved rooms and saw that the hand lines were failing to slow the fire advance. The rooms seemed to have a white glow as they burned. No sprinklers were seen in operation, but the reason was not known at that time.
Interior attack stymied
Additional lines were moved onto the third floor via the stairs as second and then third-alarm companies arrived. No interior attack was ever able to get above the third floor.
The building had an open stairway winding around the elevator shaft. At this point, the stairway was not a path of vertical fire spread from the third floor. Later, as total floors became involved, it became a communicating factor.
The second alarm at 2:57 p.m., 13 minutes after the first, brought in Engines 1 and 23, Ladder 11, and additional command officers, Acting 1st Deputy Chief R. B. Sprayberry and Chief Harry Gulley of the 5th Battalion. Sprayberry took overall command and Gulley was assigned to command operations on the fourth floor, a position that fire fighters found impossible to reach. Therefore, both Hood and Gulley operated on the third floor.
Ladder 11 set up in front, and a 2 1/2-inch hand line was taken up the aerial to the fifth floor but made little headway.
Third alarm struck
The third alarm at 3 p.m. brought in Engines 15 and 16 and Ladder 23. These companies also stretched 2 1/2-inch hand lines into the interior stairwell. Prior to being ordered out, four 1 1/2-inch and four 2 1/2-inch lines were operating inside without making headway.
Fourth-alarm Engines 5 and 12 also stretched interior lines. However, the rapid headway of the fire, the number of floors involved, and the fact that ceilings were beginning to fall led Sprayberry to order abandonment of the interior attack when advised of these conditions by Hood at approximately 3:20.
Fire fighters attempted to back the lines down the stairways, but the retreat was being pushed by extensive heat and flames. The nozzle tips and what equipment could be quickly carried out were saved, but sections of hose had to be abandoned in a pile on the second floor.
As the fire fighters were retreating, a Georgia Power Company crew went into a sidewalk vault and cut off the electrical power to the structure.
Elevating platforms called
Upon abandonment of the interior attack, master streams were set up. Three additional engines, a ladder company, the 150-foot Firebird and Snorkel 29 were called to implement this exterior attack. In the 20 minutes it took all these to arrive and go to work, fire was showing in all seventh-floor windows on the Peachtree Street side and in four separate floors on the Banks Place side next to the insurance building.
The Continental Insurance Building across Banks Place is a concrete floor, fire-resistive, 12-story office building with 13,500 square feet per floor. Occupants were ordered out by the building management shortly after the first alarm, this there was no life hazard.
As the four top floors of Loew’s became fully involved, the water curtain—by Ladder 1 operating in Banks Place near the rear of the fire building and the Firebird operating under limited height from Peachtree Street and Banks Place—had little effect against the radiant heat on the two-hour-rated exterior wall of the Continental Insurance Building.
Loew’s attack abandoned
When it became apparent that heat was affecting the insurance building and the interior Loew’s attack was abandoned, the plan was to set up the Firebird in Margaret Mitchell Square to put an elevated stream down Banks Place to protect the insurance building. Because of the effect of the grade on the apparatus, safety interlocks prevented the platform from rising to an effective height. The Firebird’s aerial stream was eventually shut down and the lines were placed into deluge sets.
Companies that had been inside Loew’s, along with arriving companies, were ordered into the insurance building to operate from the fifth through the 12th floors. Windows of wired glass failed and curtains soon were burning on numerous floors. House lines and then 2 1/2-inch hand lines were used. Fire advanced so rapidly on the ninth floor that a total burnout occurred.
As in most Atlanta high-rises, the stairwell doors are locked to prevent entry from the fire stairs. When the fire gained headway in the insurance building, the elevators were ordered turned off. Chief Ray Gossett of the 4th Battalion was in charge of operations in this structure.
—photo by Darrel Roberts.
Photos by Dave Williams
Valuable time was lost as members tried to open the stairway door to the ninth floor. Heat had warped the door so even the removal of the hinge pins did not free the door. Eventually axes and brute strength by the truck company crews destroyed the door.
By this time Battalion Chiefs Harry Gulley and Gossett were sharing the decision-making in the insurance building.
Extreme heat and smoke conditions prevailed and the electrical system shutdown killed the fire service on the elevators. Equipment had to be carried up many flights of stairs and this had a deleterious effect upon the physical stamina of the fire fighters.
Because of the fire on the ninth floor, fire fighting was abandoned for a short time on the 10th, 11th and 12th floors for fear of trapping fire fighters. Once control of the large volume of fire on the ninth floor was accomplished, advancement was made to the upper floors and fires were extinguished.
The number of lines and the pure guts of the fire fighters operating above the ninth floor prevented the entire top of the building from becoming involved. Since all windows on that side were out, the Loew’s flames had access to those floors.
Fire kept out of theater
Now full attention was resumed at playing lines on to the Loew’s Building since, with the retaking of all floors in the insurance building, the threat to exposures appeared to be over. Two 2 1/2-inch lines were placed inside the huge, high-ceiling lobby of the theater building itself and these prevented the fire from gaining access to the auditorium.
Control of the fire was declared by the 1st Battalion at 12:22 a.m., January 31. The fire had consumed the top four floors and totaled the usefulness of the entire Loew’s Building, and had burned out the ninth floor of the Continental Insurance Building along with causing fire, water and smoke damage throughout the interior.
A total of 19 engines and nine ladder trucks were called to the scene along with six chief officers. Sixth aerials saw service in the master stream operations along with three deluge guns and eight 2 1/2-inch lines from the insurance building. At least three 2 1/2-inch hand lines were used in the narrow Banks Place, the lobby of the theater building, or on the roofs of the one-story taxpayers to the south.
Ten fire fighters were injured, none seriously.
During the fire, the temperature ranged from 24 to 26 degrees.
There were 127 fire fighters assigned, but it is estimated that about 150 fire fighters fought the fire because many off-duty personnel came in after hearing radio news about the fire.
Fire tapped out
With the arrival of recalled A shift, additional reserve equipment was put into service and fire fighters who had been on the scene were relieved. Officially, the fire was tapped out at 6:33 p.m. on January 31, but there were many trips for hot spots during the next week. Demolition of the burned-out shell began on Saturday, February 3.
The cause of the fire was undetermined. However, the rapid spread and the involvement in rooms on two sides of a hallway but not in the hall itself indicated an incendiary origin.
Since it was scheduled to be demolished, no structural loss was reported for the Loew’s building, but $700,000 structural and contents damage was estimated for the insurance building.
