On the eve of flaming destruction

At one point in the frigid night, standing in the man-made blizzard whirling in an otherwise clear sky, Lt. Tom Higgins of the Bangor Fire Department looked up at the flaming ice castle on Main Street and imagined he was on the set of a Hollywood disaster movie.

But the spectacular fire was no movie, despite the almost apocalyptic, rime-coated vision it created. This was dangerously real, as challenging as the job of firefighting in subzero weather can get. And, in the end, the destruction of the historic old Masonic Hall building was the hardest part of all for those who worked in the most brutal conditions to save it.

“No one likes to fight a fire from the outside, because that’s when you know you’ve lost the building,” said Higgins, eating spaghetti in the Main Street firehouse nearby as he recalled the difficulties of the long night.

When the firefighters arrived at the building just after 8:30 p.m. Thursday, the smoke from the front doors was so heavy it hung in thick black clouds along the ground. Having breached the building’s side doors on steeply sloping Water Street, the crews encountered flames in the basement boiler room and on most of the other floors.

“The sprinkler system was running heavy at that point and visibility inside was zero because of the smoke,” said firefighter Phil Hilt. “The fire was already way ahead of us by then, a slow, deep burn.”

After only about a half-hour inside, the crews were ordered to evacuate the building.

“The smoke was so dense and the floors were spongy,” Higgins said. “There were real safety concerns, so we had to get out and go into defensive mode. We were afraid the building would come down.”

Once outside, the crews’ sodden turnout gear instantly froze in the minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit, encasing firefighters in shells of ice from head to toe. Gloves became useless, frozen claws, forcing the firefighters to hold their hands in the truck exhaust until they could grip the hoses again.

“Otherwise it was better to keep frozen and keep moving around,” Hilt said. “When you thaw out, all the water soaks in and that can be dangerous.”

The water – 5,000 to 6,000 gallons a minute, for more than six hours straight – crystallized as soon as it left the hoses, creating a snowstorm around the burning building throughout the night and the next morning. Hilt likened it to a snow-making operation on a ski mountain. Ice-covered hoses burst as they became too stiff to stretch any more. Firefighters – about 34 from Bangor, with another 15 or so from neighboring communities – slipped and fell on the white ice that surrounded the scene. Slogging through coursing water provided the only traction they could get.

“I’ve done only one other fire as cold as this, and that was a long time ago,” said firefighter David Estes, who figured he would work 34 hours straight before his shift ended. “We knew right away that all the cards were stacked against us on this one. It gave us a sinking feeling, knowing it was going to be a very long, cold night with no sleep.”

Higgins and the other men called home during the night to assure their anxious loved ones they were OK. Hampden firefighters took over the operation of the downtown fire station, where they washed hoses and other equipment as fast as it could be hauled in. The Red Cross and Salvation Army showed up to help, and several area merchants supplied food and coffee and bathrooms for the numbed firefighters.

“It was the kind of fire you could die in, so we had to work as a team and look out for each other,” Higgins said. “This is a fire you don’t forget.”