30 Rescued Over Ladders as Blaze In Cellar Fills Police HQ With Smoke
Assistant Chief Paterson, N.J., Fire Department
The afternoon quiet was disrupted by the wailing of all the air-raid sirens. Then all communications between the Paterson, N.J., Fire and Police Departments suddenly went dead.
Less than a minute later, a police officer, in his haste to sound an alarm, crashed through the glass door of fire headquarters, severely cutting his arm. He reported that the police headquarters around the corner was on fire. A box alarm was immediately transmitted at 4:25 p.m. last Feb. 8, and Engines 1,5, 12, Squad 1, Truck 2, Battalion Chief Joseph Pellegrino, Deputy Chief Edward Hancock and I responded.
Upon arrival, the fire fighters encountered heavy smoke coming from all floors of the 77-year-old, three-story, granite building which served 420 officers and 80 civilians and the municipal court.
Occupants trapped
The building was occupied by over 50 employees at the time of the fire. Some occupants on the upper floors were trapped by the fast-spreading, choking smoke emanating from the ground floor. They escaped out second-floor windows and took refuge on a roof at the rear of the building. Two 40-foot extension ladders were raised to them by the first-due truck company and over 30 persons were removed to safety over the ladders.
The heat was so intense that the first-in companies found the first floor to be untenable even while using selfcontained breathing apparatus.
A second alarm was ordered at 4:28 p.m., a third at 4:35 p.m., a fourth at 4:40 p.m., a mutual aid call at 4:43 p.m. and a general alarm at 5:05 p.m.
Previous fire recalled
Life safety was the number one priority and this included prisoners who might be in the cells at the rear of the municipal court on the first floor. This brought back a vivid memory of the tragic fire in the same cellblock in 1963, when three prisoners died and 19 others were overcome. However, we were relieved when a police captain reported that only two prisoners were in the holding pen and they had been removed by police officers when the fire broke out. He also reported that one prisoner was being booked at the time of discovery and he escaped in the confusion.
After a preliminary search, the main body of fire was found to be in the cellar, where the property clerk’s office housed all types of evidence, stolen property and department records. Also in the cellar was the armory with over 100 carbines, countless cases of ammunition, including shotgun shells, and tear gas canisters. Hose lines were stretched to cover the exposures, which included a three-story furniture store and a bank on the sides and a four-story office building connected by a tunnel to the rear of the fire building.
A direct attack on the fire was then made with six 2 1/2-inch lines from the front and north side. Several cellar pipes were used, but they lacked the necessary reach. This was a very stubborn smoky fire, and it was discovered that there were two brick walls down the center of the cellar, which set up a fire problem of three separate cellar fires.
Tear gas released
When the fire reached the armory with ammunition exploding and burning tear gas grenades spewing noxious fumes into the street, it was decided to use high expansion foam. This was done in an effort to both control the fire and counteract the tear gas.
A trailer-mounted foam generator was positioned and the foam was directed into the cellar through a sidewalk entrance. This high expansion foam was successful in controlling the main fire and especially in suppressing the fumes from the burning tear gas grenades.
The foam calmed the fire down enough for fire fighters to get in and place additional distributors and cellar pipes to complete extinguishment and overhaul. Most of the fire was contained in the cellar with the exception of a small fire in the second floor radio room. The fire spread there through some poke-throughs for wires.
Records destroyed
The fire destroyed important police records, court documents, evidence and thousands of tickets for parking and motor vehicle violations, as well as an undetermined amount of cash paid earlier in the day by violators. Many of the ruined police documents are recorded in the data bank in the City Hall, but others are irreplaceable.
City Hall is the center for the city’s entire communications operations, served by a centrex system that includes 95 centrex lines, 260 alarm circuits and six data terminal lines that tie the police department to the city’s computer and the state police network. When a city’s police headquarters is destroyed by fire and all radio and telecommunications services are lost, one would think there would be chaos, but this was not so in Paterson.
Photos by Lou Turtno, chief photographer, Paterson News
One of the outstanding attributes of a professional fire or police department is flexibility to cope with adversity. In Paterson, the fire and police departments coordinated a joint effort with the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company and the Warner Communications Company to demonstrate this flexibility by providing on-the-spot emergency communications that maintained the safety of the city.
Temporary communications
When the loss of their communications were apparent, the police immediately went to portable radios until a spare transmitter was set up in the City Hall Annex. Arrangements were made with neighboring Prospect Park for temporary use of their police department communications facilities. New Jersey Bell installation crews connected eight trunk lines to be manned by Paterson dispatchers. Several radio-equipped policemen were assigned to the Paterson fire alarm office, which already had a direct telephone and radio link with the Prospect Park Police Depayment. The routing of calls to Prospect Park was only a temporary measure.
While the fire was still out of control, city officials mapped plans for relocating the police headquarters. They selected Martin Luther King High School, a large vacant building that was up for sale. More than 60 New Jersey Bell and Warner Communications technicians worked around-the-clock installing trunk lines and more than 110 individual telephone lines, radio transmitters and computers.
This transfer of a modern busy police department was executed in only two days, a massive operation that would normally take three months to accomplish.
