After 27 years on the job, Rick Cheverie, an assistant fire chief in Bangor, thought he’d already fought just about every kind of fire he was likely to encounter in his career.

But not long after he showed up last Thursday night at the burning Masonic Hall building downtown, he knew this one would be a fire to remember, a fire he would talk about for years to come.

Everything about it spelled disaster, from the deep, slow burn that resisted all efforts to drown it from the inside, to the collapsed floor that forced an immediate evacuation of some 27 firefighters from the black and smoke-filled interior, to the paralyzing subzero cold and wind that flash froze their wet gear the moment they stepped outside.

And when there was no hope left of saving the historic building, frustrated fire crews could do nothing but soak it down for the next 16 frigid hours until the wrecking ball arrived to finish what the stubborn fire had started.

But something truly impressive occurred on the street during those futile hours, too, something that none of the firefighters could have anticipated and which they won’t soon forget.

“The acts of kindness and compassion by strangers was amazing,” said Cheverie, who witnessed his share of them during the 22 brutal hours he spent at the scene. “There were so many, and the guys keep coming up to me with more. We’re overwhelmed by it all.”

The firefighters don’t know the names of most of the kind-hearted folks who stopped by to offer food and comfort, and probably never will. The strangers’ faces began emerging in fleeting snippets of memory recalled back at the firehouse, once the men got a chance to eat and sleep and talk to one another about what they’d been through.

There was the lady who walked up to a crew in the night to offer a steaming pot of beans and hot dogs she had cooked for them. There was the mother who baked cookies for the men Friday morning and her child who passed them over the yellow caution tape. There was the man who brought bags of sandwiches, and the many people who kept showing up with cups of coffee, and the anonymous pizza company that sent its drivers down to the scene to feed the shivering crews.

As the stories come out in bits and pieces, Cheverie jots each down so he won’t forget. There’s the one about the owner of Epi’s restaurant, which is next door to the Masonic Hall and was without power for hours, who used a flashlight to fire up his gas range early in the morning and immediately started cooking pots of soup for the emergency crews. There’s the one about the Bangor Hydro employees and the telephone company workers who took up collections Thursday night to buy food and coffee.

Cheverie has heard about all the hot bagels generously supplied by Bagel Central and the 50 gallons of coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts which kept the crews going. On his list are the people from the Salvation Army and the Red Cross workers, who brought hair dryers to dry the firefighter’s sodden gloves and socks. He expects to see those kind souls at a difficult fire, just as he can count on the help from fire crews from Bangor’s neighboring towns.

But he doesn’t know anything about that big-hearted stranger who, after watching the fire for a while early Friday, drove to Granville Lumber in Holden, where he works, and returned with a box of hand warmers that the crews used so gratefully. Or the resident of the assisted living center in the Freese’s building next door who offered his apartment to anyone who needed a place to get warm or to nap.

“In all my years in the fire service,” Cheverie said, “I’ve never seen such an outpouring of support from the public. It brings a lump to my throat. The guys say we’ve got to somehow find a way to thank all the people who were there for us, but how do you thank people if you don’t even know who they are?”

He considered taking out an ad in the newspaper, or maybe writing a letter to the editor, but he’s not sure either would convey what the department is feeling right now.

“The conditions out there were absolutely horrendous, and these unsung heroes came out to lessen the burden and allow us to work,” Cheverie said. “I cannot tell you how much that means to every one of us.”

Then again, maybe he just did.