Copyright 2005 Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
By MARK MELADY
Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Mass.)
WORCESTER, Mass. - Former Fire Chief Dennis L. Budd had announced in October 1999, two months before the fire, that he would retire in the fall of 2000. He was often asked if he wished he had retired before the fire. He said it was better for a chief with only a year left to carry the burden of six dead firefighters than for it to happen in the first year of a new chief’s tenure.
“Whoever writes the script up there knew fully what they were doing,” Chief Budd said at Chief Dio’s swearing-in, Dec. 5, 2000. “It’s the way it should have been.”
It has been six years since the Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fired the night sky over the city, but Fire Chief Gerard Dio is still sometimes at a loss for words to describe the ever-lingering effects that night had on him, the department and the city.
“I’m not sure how to say this,” or “I don’t know if I have the right words,” he said at times while talking about the Dec. 3, 1999, fire that took the lives of six city firefighters. Finally he said simply, “They’re never far from our hearts,” referring to Firefighters Paul A. Brotherton, Jeremiah M. Lucey, Timothy P. Jackson and Joseph T. McGuirk and Lts. Thomas E. Spencer and James F. “Jay” Lyons III.
In a wide-ranging interview on the sixth anniversary of the fire, the man who has headed the department for the last five of those years talked about:
Remaking the department to meet the emergency complexities of a city in the 21st century.
The possibility of adding ambulances to the department’s fleet, reflecting the department’s expanding role as a first responder.
Keeping up with the city’s abandoned and vacant buildings.
The impact of stalled contract talks between the city administration and the firefighters’ union.
Moving from yearly department fire anniversary memorial services to every 5 years.
For the first five years, the fire’s anniversary was marked by the department with a solemn, short service in which the six firefighters who died that night were called out once again at 6:13 p.m. and a wreath laid for each by firefighters from their respective companies.
The Worcester Firefighters Pipe and Drum Brigade played a mournful rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Chief Dio spoke briefly. The chaplains led prayers and by 6:30 p.m. it was over. The several hundred who turned out, chatted for awhile or looked at the tribute decorating the chain link fence that enclosed the fire site on Franklin Street.
The service was held outside the fence for the first four anniversaries but last year the city took the 1.5-acre parcel by eminent domain just days before the fifth anniversary. The night of the memorial, for the first time since firefighters spent a grueling week recovering the remains of their dead, the Fire Department and the people they serve returned to what had become as sacred as any ancestral burial ground.
“This is now our property,” District Fire Chief Frank D. DiLiddo said then. “This is where our men died and we will guard this to the end.”
But after last year’s anniversary, the subject of much media attention, Chief Dio said those who planned it questioned the value of official annual commemorations.
“A lot of emotional stuff goes into the anniversary as well as a lot of running around, lining things up,” Chief Dio said. “We started asking ourselves, `Do we want to do this every year?’ We decided we wanted the anniversaries to be more relaxed and low-key except for the major ones. Of course the guys are always going to go down to the site whether it’s official or not.”
The department will hold official commemorations every five years, the first coming on the 10th in 2009.
“We hope to be permanently on the site before then,” Chief Dio said, referring to plans to build a new fire station on the Franklin Street grounds. “If we are there we will do something on the day,” he said.
(Today, Bishop Robert J. McManus will celebrate the Mass for Firefighters beginning at 10:15 a.m. at St. Paul’s Cathedral.)
The state Senate budget has $2 million earmarked for the station and the House budget has $250,000 for site cleanup. Last year, Gov. Mitt Romney vetoed funds for the station. Even if the money is approved, Chief Dio said it is unlikely ground could be broken before next summer, if then.
According to the recent annual benchmarking report of the Regional Municipal Research Bureau, the city has 157 abandoned or vacant residential and commercial buildings. The numbers are down slightly from 2004 but Chief Dio said dealing with the vacant and abandoned structures “goes with the territory of an urban fire department.”
“One building comes off the list, another one goes on,” he said.
Fire prevention inspectors and line firefighters regularly inspect buildings that appear to be unoccupied.
“The first thing we have to do is track down the owners and that can be an intricate paper trail,” the chief said. “When we locate the owner, it takes them a while to admit they own the building. Then we take them over there and show them the roof is gone and they say, `Gee, when did that happen?’”
Chief Dio said that before vacant and abandoned buildings are boarded up, the inside is photographed and potential problem areas noted.
He said he was reasonably confident city firefighters would not be surprised by unknown dangers as they were in the cold storage warehouse.
“The department has a good grasp of what’s out there,” Chief Dio said. “We still have a few cold storage buildings (one recently was demolished on Lamartine Street). There’s always a danger with any building on fire - vacant or occupied.”
While the number of structure fires has steadily declined in recent years, the department’s first-responder calls have increased, as have calls for hazardous materials and other non-fire incidents.
The fire department of the future will be more diversified, Chief Dio said, not necessarily smaller.
“The equipment will change and the training will be more specialized, but it still comes down to who do you call for a hazmat (hazardous materials) spill?” Chief Dio said. “Who do you call for a building collapse? Who do you call in a hurricane or a tornado, a terrorist attack? There will always be fires. There may be a question of how many companies you need to fight fires, but you still have to have equipment and men to put water on fires. We have 10 stations and can be anywhere in the city in four minutes. Who else can do that?”
Firefighters often respond to car accidents and other non-fire emergencies in fire and rescue trucks that are vastly oversized for the job, Chief Dio acknowledged.
He said the department could add two ambulances - one each for the East Side and West Side, to supplement the ambulance service the city contracts for with UMass Memorial Emergency Medical Services.