Town’s Sad Vigil for ‘Brothers’ Lost in Fire

Tim Jewell is a tough guy, a 50-year-old bartender who does not make a habit of displaying his emotions. On Sunday morning, in tears, Jewell told his wife, Kathy, that they should return all the Christmas presents they’d bought each other and give the money instead to the families of the six firefighters who died here Friday in a terrible warehouse blaze.

“I’ll be here next year,” Jewell told Kathy. “They won’t.”

Carrying six red carnations, Kathy Jewell was among a steady stream of mourners who gathered outside the windowless five-story brick building that continued to smolder well into Sunday. Smoke and silence and sadness filled the air as firefighters searched the rubble for the comrades they lost.

“Every step we take brings us closer to finding out where our brothers are,” Fire Capt. Dennis J. Dolan told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

Laying a bouquet on Engine No. 7, the red fire truck that had carried the six to work Friday and that fast became a flower-bedecked shrine, Judy Fuller, a Worcester city employee, said in a heavy voice, “There’s 15 fatherless kids in this city today.”

And Fire Marshal Stephen D. Coan told the Gazette, “We grieve as hard as we have ever grieved today.”

The five-alarm fire that claimed the lives of Lt. Thomas E. Spencer, 42, and firefighters Timothy P. Jackson, 51; James F. Lyons, 34; Joseph T. McGuirk, 38; Paul A. Brotherton, 41; and Jeremiah M. Lucey, 38, ranked as one of the worst line-of-duty death scenes for U.S. firefighters in recent memory, said John Brown, a historian for the Professional Fire Fighters, a Massachusetts union with 12,000 members.

The severity of the tragedy--the worst U.S. loss of life involving firefighters since 14 died in a Colorado forest fire in 1994--prompted President Clinton to praise the “courageous service” and “tremendous commitment and sacrifice” made daily by American firefighters.

“It’s our job to save lives,” said Brown, who had been on the scene since late Friday night. “Sometimes we get into trouble doing it.”

Several dozen firefighters, all members of Rescue Unit One, entered the burning building in search of two homeless men believed to be living inside Worcester Cold Storage & Warehouse Co. District Chief Michael McNamee said conditions were so bad that “in two to three seconds, you couldn’t see 6 inches in front of your face.”

McNamee heard a radioed plea from two firefighters: “Mayday! Mayday! We’re running out of air!”

The four additional rescue-unit members who were lost in the cavernous, abandoned building are believed to have become disoriented. Their radios conveyed desperation: “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!” one firefighter radioed before his voice faded out.

No cause for the fire in central Worcester has been established, but arson is suspected. Supervisors at the city’s shelters for the homeless said Sunday that their residents were accounted for and that the warehouse was probably unoccupied.

Worcester Mayor Ray Mariano said Saturday: “This morning, the sun didn’t rise. It didn’t rise because we lost six members of our family.”

The group is a particularly fraternal fellowship, said local union President Frank Raffa. With 479 firefighters, the department here is second in size in New England only to that of Boston. Raffa said every member of his force had come to the warehouse site to pay tribute, adding that condolences had poured in from firefighters all over the world.

Nearby, firefighters from around the state converged on the scene. “If you thought about what might happen, you’d never be able to go to work,” said Rob Desmond, a member of the Peabody (Mass.) Fire Department. “You just think you’re going to go in there, get it done, wrap up your hose and go home.”

Desmond’s friend John Batour, also a Peabody firefighter, said the collegiality is part of what attracts generations of family members to this perilous line of work. “Policemen work on their own, but this is a team job,” Batour said. “The firehouse is like a second home.”

Although the community they work in is more than an hour from Worcester, “the minute something like this happens,” Batour said, with Desmond nodding in agreement, “we are all a team.”

A block from the fire scene, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church was turned into a sanctuary for family members and exhausted firefighters who combed through the warehouse in search of their brethren. Clergy and grief counselors were present, and cots were arranged into a makeshift dormitory. Red Cross vans shuttled relatives who watched as a giant backhoe chewed away at the building’s brick walls.

At the Worcester Fire Department headquarters on Grafton Street, a wall of flowers grew in size throughout the weekend. By late Sunday, Engine No. 7 also was covered with bouquets. Firefighters, looking haggard, said the outpouring, as Raffa put it, “makes this difficult situation a little more bearable.”