Follow up news article from the Bergen Record on Northjersey.com
Cold, wind, ice, lack of water among hurdles for firefighters who knocked down Marcal fire, 500 jobs affected by the fire
Iced-over fire hydrants with no water to give. Frozen water hoses that water couldn't flow through. Firefighters in full gear, caked in icy glaze as they fought a mushrooming inferno along the Passaic River deep into the winter night. It was a nightmare scenario created by Wednesday's polar temperatures. Still, about 400 firefighters ? most of them volunteers ? from 50 towns in five counties endured, as they labored to extinguish a mammoth fire at the Marcal Paper Mills in Elmwood Park. But the cold was only one of the hazards that night. Roofs fell. Buildings collapsed. Gusting winds blew red-hot embers onto neighboring homes and businesses, threatening to push the blaze to unimaginable heights.
How do you fight such a beast? Carefully. Especially when it's gorging on an antique timber-and-brick warehouse full of rolled paper products. "We were making good progress," said Michael Sulick, chief of the all-volunteer Elmwood Park Fire Department. "But that wind wrapped around the fire and took it all over. At that point, the fire went up ... We heard cracking and pulled everyone out. It just went downhill." From there, the strategy switched to punishing the fire from long range with ladders and hoses, shooting water into the wind so it poured over the flames, Sulick said. Fire experts across the state lauded Sulick for both his use of firefighting tactics and the savvy way he managed the many departments that responded to the scene.
"Right out of the gate the elements were against them and they were still able to control the fire,? Charles Lind, a retired Jersey City battalion chief and president of the New Jersey Deputy and Battalion Fire Chiefs Association, said in a Thursday interview. ?Everybody going to a scene wants to get to the fire. But the incident commander can?t allow that. He?s got to have specific tasks for the different companies and many of those are away from the heart of the fire. That?s exactly what [Sulick] did here.?
This was critical given the fire's size and the harsh winds driving it. The danger to nearby buildings from floating embers was tremendous, said James Tedesco, the Bergen County Executive and a lifetime Paramus firefighter who spent the night at the scene."With the wind whipping as much as it was, it was sending embers the size of baseballs through the air, landing on people's roofs," Tedesco said.
When fire companies from other towns arrived, Sulick sent them through borough streets to watch for escaped cinders. That's what Brian Batchelor, of the Wallington Fire Department, said he was doing at about 8 p.m. ? watching nearby businesses to make sure they stayed fire-free.It?s a task Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said isjust as important as fighting the main fire.
?This was an uncontrollable situation,? said Corbett, a longtime volunteer firefighter in Bergen County. ?You had extremely cold temperatures, incredibly heavy winds and a factory full of paper on fire.
The final property toll was staggering: 30 of the 36 structures on Marcal's 30-acre site were damaged, burned or destroyed, county officials said. Miraculously, no one appears to have been injured. Tedesco said at least some of the buildings had sprinklers. But the fire quickly overwhelmed them, he said. And once buildings began collapsing, the pipes feeding the sprinklerswere crushed, rendering the remaining sprinkler heads useless.
At about 7 p.m., firefighters drafted the Passaic River into service ? they needed more water, and the municipal system couldn?t handle it, Tedesco said."The only other option was to go into the river,? he said. Trucks didn't stop pumping river water until about 10 a.m. Thursday.
By 10 p.m. Wednesday, the famed red-and-white neon Marcal sign had tumbled from its perch overlooking Route 80. By Thursday morning, much of industrial complex was reduced to ice and ashes. The remnant brick walls looked like survivors of the London Blitz. Damaged firetrucks stood in the ice, waiting to be towed out, while pockets of flame continued to smoke.
Despite the carnage, it could have been worse ? especially if the chief hadn't focused on containing the fire where it was, said Walter Nugent, an adjunct professor in the fire science program at New Jersey City University in Jersey City. "This thing could have kept running through the whole town," Nugent said. "You're trying to make sure a bad situation, which is what you have, doesn't get much worse. Let's keep it to the paper factory and not lose half the town."
