High quality composition and editing as always. This video really captures the feeling of the firefighters simply overwhelmed by the massive scale of the fire.

My dad is a woonsocket FF (but we live in blackstone) and he was there he was also at all the others the past 13 years and a couple times he almost really got hurt. he fell through a floor :( !!!!!!!!!! at 2:19 you can see my dad doing something with the hose near the truck..........lol but ya thanks for saving my and others lives dad. you truly are my biggest hero ILY

So sad to see old buildings burn like this. History ☹️

@nebulavortex3531

2 жыл бұрын

My grandma lived in woonsocket and her house burned down then a few months ago i found out that her cats actually burned in the fire it made me feel so sad for the poor cats this was back like 13 years ago but woonsocket gets many house fires probably bc of stray cigarettes which is exactly how my grandmas house burned down

@H0TWHEELS

2 жыл бұрын

@@nebulavortex3531 Hi I am so sorry to hear that. I love all animals and this definitely was sad. I wish you all the very best in the future.

@nebulavortex3531

2 жыл бұрын

@@H0TWHEELS thank you i appreciate it we are way past that tho this was about maybe 12 years ago but the saddest part was the cats passing bc my grandma survived i live near this city i hear about fires in woonsocket all the time but my grandma has a nicer apartment in a safer area so thats good

@H0TWHEELS

2 жыл бұрын

@@nebulavortex3531 I am glad to hear she's in a better area. Thank you for the update

These old textile mills' floors are soaked with oil after a hundred years use so when they set on fire they burn at terrific speed - it is best to just stand back and let them burn as they cannot be saved. I live in old textile area of UK and we have had lots of these fires and big mills destroyed in very quick time.

About '85, L Fish Furniture warehouse in Chicago went up. A one-block one storey modern structure. It about created it's own weather pattern. About a 5 by 5 mile cloud on a calm sunny Sunday. Looked like a ginormous tornado! It was over fast, too. The owners let scrap men in to haul off all the iron (scrap was almost worthless then), and I swear to God, except for the 4 outer walls, the ash that was left could'a been cleaned up with a shovel and a pickup truck! Not a combustible piece was left!

I live about a mile away from this fire and I saw the flames/smoke from my apartment.... I still remember it

After seven years, this massive fire is always impressive.

They go up so darn fast cos the floors are practically marinated in decades worth of machine oil!

@SamuraiPie8111

8 жыл бұрын

+Mike Gallant brick walls too, it's like an oven inside

@kevino3866

7 жыл бұрын

that could be, but more like there are so many oil sources from all sorts of machines and lubricants that can add to the spreading of fire. I doubt the floor was the problem unless they never cleaned it right. This was a mill and not a factory so it makes me believe they made a food product like flour. Which in a dust form is very flammable and can spread fast. For the disbelievers from my comment, our family business burned down to a careless employee with a dirty rag in a trash can with previously disposed solvents by the same careless person. My current boss worked in a flour mill and they had a fire due to too much dust, he was lucky to get out! I could be completely wrong about this fire/place so if you know more please let me know. I would like to know the cause just out of curiosity!

@frmerrin2

7 жыл бұрын

Mill is a term used to describe turn of the century manufacturing facilities, there are dozens of them in the surrounding communities which were used for everything from manufacturing paper to textiles.

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

I watched this fire in person when I lived and worked a few blocks away. In Rhode Island, the word factory and mill, when it comes to old brick buildings like this, mean the same thing. Most mills in Rhode Island started out as textile mills or in other words, factories that made fabric for various purposes. Only the shell and the interior vertical supports are made of brick, everything else is made of wood, usually oak though a lot of pine was also used. Almost all the old textile mills in Rhode Island were shut down by 2000 due to Chinese imports of textiles. Most such old mills have been repurposed but many stood abandoned and many still are abandoned and have been for years, their owners hoping to eventually sell them. One 150,000 square foot 135 year old mill recently sold for $1.2 million. Many of these have been turned into condos. In any case, nearly all of the old textile manufacturing equipment would have been removed and sold as scrap metal as soon as they shut down. Usually a team of maintenance people go through the building to remove obvious flammables such as drums of chemicals and oils, pallets and rags etc. But given that the entire interior is wood, that often doesn't do any good. Yes the floors are often soaked with oil, this was often deliberate as a finishing agent when the building is first built to help preserve the wood and keep it from rotting. It is rarely the result of oil from machinery though that certainly did happen.

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

In Rhode Island, most were used for textiles. Around 1950's, about 65% of all Rhode Island factories were textile mills, about 25% were metal manufacturing and about 5% were paper mills. Of the rest, jewelry and silver production were the most prominent. By the 1980's most metal manufacturing, machine shops etc. were beginning to shut down or down size. By the end of the 1990's few machine shops were left, almost no textile miles were left and briefly I worked for the last paper mill.

These old factories( a lot of them) are really beautiful looking buildings and they would make great Apartments offices Etc.. The problem like some of the comments stated is 100 gears and more of saturated flooring with machine oil ! So if you get an apartment and one of these kind of buildings you make damn sure they stripped that place bare when they were building it !

Wow! My dad used to work at this place when it was "The Rubber Shop" (Uniroyal). We lived on First Avenue (on the corner of First Avenue and Olo Street. You could smell the Archway cookies being baked at the Archway Cookie Bakery. We built forts and cabins in the dump around the corner. I went to Sacred Heart School on 2nd Avenue... Memories... :-)

Putting water on that monster's like pissing into a volcano. Jeeze

@Joshua79C

7 жыл бұрын

Better to control than let burn uncontrolled and thus allowing other nearby buildings to catch on fire. I live in Blackstone. MA which is next door our FD also responded.

@Utubin

4 жыл бұрын

Perfect analogy.

@Utubin

4 жыл бұрын

Exactly aka. (Egg Zag Lee) What a great analogy.

Gd bless all the brave firefighters who battled this fire. You're all heroes!

Used to know a few guys who worked for many years in this building before they moved prior to its closure, it does not bear thinking what tragic circumstances there may have been had the mill (as it was known) still been in operation.

Great coverage!

Thanks for posting

Greetings from Canada. Excellent video.

Heard about this on the news. It's crazy how rapidly it spread.

to herr horst: if the fire is too bad like in this case sometimes the fire dept's will let the building burn itself down and extinguish itself... but this building was surrounded by homes so they did their best to keep this fire under control, but the building was over 100 years old no fire blocks in it the wood was probably soaked with oils and other chemicals that were used in this factory when it was open, theres old textile mills here in CT the Cheney mill complex they turned those into apartments and now are beautiful but they all still have the original wood in it and probably still soaked with the oil from the machinery so im sure if a fire sparked in the old cheney mills it would be a huge fire

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

A lot of people believe that about how the wood got oily but the truth is when they build the old mills they deliberately soaked all the lumber in oil to preserve it from rot. In fact, at one time, soaking wood in oil used more oil than did burning it for fuel. They stopped this practice by the 1950's.

@mikegallant811

4 жыл бұрын

@@nunyabiznez6381 I should hope so! Like turning it into a ready made funeral pyre.....

Anybody knows how many companies brought in that incident? Nice on-scene video.

@markdemers4705

8 жыл бұрын

The description states more than 20.

What replaces this mill. Will not survive as long. These places were built by dedicated engineers. Experience. And if the next building gets a design and craftmanship with a free hand. Experience should not throw the original designs out with the bathwater.

@peterp1158

5 жыл бұрын

Still an empty lot in 2018

My father worked at a mill in the Woon area for 25 yrs. He always said that if it ever caught fire, it'd be an instant inferno cuz the heavy structural wooden beams and thick wooden floors had a hundred yrs of oil within them. His mill did eventually burn in 1978. The massive brick walls crumbled.

I've never seen such fire in my life! Amazing!

Is it me or do they seem close to the collapse zone at times? To risky. Control exposures and stage away. Massive fire that required more water then they had. Better off using forrest fire drops from a plane.

@mtnman1984

10 жыл бұрын

***** It's likely that this building's structure was all wood. Old, untreated hardwood burns very hot and very fast.

@mtnman1984

10 жыл бұрын

***** The building was over 100 years old with hardwood floors. Over the life of the building, the stain used on the floors plus whatever else was used in the factory and soaked into the floor is fuel, or even accelerant. Also, any paper or cloth, etc. As the fire gets larger and hotter, everything burns faster. Lastly, if you look at how many windows are on the outer wall compared to the dimensions of the building, that fire got all the fresh air it wanted.

@OnionRingsGaming

8 жыл бұрын

+Rob D (SilentBob) A forest drop probably costs too much, shoulda just let it burn out.

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

Lol, right. You are obviously not familiar with New England. I doubt any air craft that do that sort of thing would have made it all the way out from California to Rhode Island in time to do that and even if they had they would have needed to go through a ten year bureaucratic process to get permission. You can't disturb bodies of water like that. Everything in New England is environmentally vulnerable. This is probably why no such equipment exists in New England. I lived in New England for 30 years and never heard of a forest fire drop being done there.

@modelrc9500

5 жыл бұрын

nunya biznez agreed

That is one huge fire! Was this building abandoned?

2 things will put this out...it runs out of fuel or someone drops a lake on it...

@KillerTruffle

5 жыл бұрын

I think he meant drops an *actual* lake, not just a tanker drop (in other words, one of your only options with a fire like this once it's seated is to protect exposures and let it burn itself out).

@bufferbuffer7320

5 жыл бұрын

@@KillerTruffle That's actually what they did. At 2:40 the order to evacuate the zone around the building was given.

@mikegallant811

5 жыл бұрын

@@KillerTruffle drop the lake...hmm where's our best bud from Krypton when you need him?

To Herr Horst: Listen to the opening radio traffic; the chief/ battalion chief(?) wanted the apparatus to be protected from the heat generated by a fire of that size. Whether in Europe or NA, I'm sure damaged apparatus are no good to anyone. ;) -And besides, the vast majority of fire depts. in the US are quite professional and well-equipped.

@EskimoJoe492

10 жыл бұрын

Not only that, but if you listen from 1:10 to 1:20 you will hear "the plug is welded shut". These guys seemed hosed from the start, but this was due to circumstances beyond their control.

@dirtywater5336

9 жыл бұрын

EskimoJoe492 clearly an arson

@dorendabosch4878

8 жыл бұрын

dorenda dient

@dorendabosch4878

8 жыл бұрын

disney

@dorendabosch4878

8 жыл бұрын

dorenda

I like at 4:42 how they're spraying water right in the open windows of the neighboring house haha.

Hey, can we use this in a film we're working on?

what started the Fire? i dont think i ever heard

There is literally nothing you can do for a fire like this. I don't know why they're even trying to put it out. It's just a waste of water at that point. Protect your exposures and let it burn itself out

@Joshua79C

7 жыл бұрын

At the least they are keeping it in control and preventing it from getting out of hand and spreading t the other place nearby. By they way I live in Blackstone, MA which is across the state line from Woonsocket. lots of other mills either still empty or turned apartment/condominium in the same area, my family has a history in the area.

@retiredarthritic2083

5 жыл бұрын

I agree the fire building is far beyond saving. Isolation and containment is the goal here.

@chiefread

5 жыл бұрын

Nothing? Setup multiple ladders and engine deck guns with foam. With millions of dollars of equipment compliments of the tax-payer, we better do our level best in ATTACKING challenging jobs like this. Think outside conventional approaches: air drop comes to mind. Consider doing a better job in fire prevention. This had a heavy fire load to begin.

@mattmoschkau2831

5 жыл бұрын

I don’t think they were trying to put it out, that’s intense heat and lots of flying ash and debris. Protecting nearby property from a fire like this will still take a departments full resources. Plus it’s political water, it looks much better to the general public to try an extinguish a fire rather than doing nothing.

@chiefread

5 жыл бұрын

Matt Moschkau ...that’s the problem, they didn’t do a good enough job in alerting adequate resources to attack this historic building. Mutual Aid, multiple master streams, foam etc Lots of nice, new, expensive equipment and gear not being used effectively. We can’t and mustn’t let toxic plumes rage unabated. Only protecting nearby structures is reaching low.

daamn my mom used to work there back in the day. soooo sad

Building is gone. At that point anything goes, cutting the fence would be OK. But you also need to keep the ladder companies at a safe distance- you normally have PEOPLE in those buckets. You can operate some of the newer aerial guns from the turntable if things get bad, but you still need to watch your exposure and collapse zone.

I've seen 4 mills go up in woonsocket had to be evacuated twice so sad to see history gone

how does a hydrant get welded shut?

Take your time with that hydrant boys. It ain't going anywhere soon.

Witch Geneva are you talking about

omg I remember I saw this while having a playdate with my cousin!-Samantha

I lived in Woonsocket after this. Poor building. Never knew why it was like that. They had started demolition when I lived there.

How does a fire get that involved in the daytime?

i was coming back from milford mass when this was engulfed....i had to walk down harris ave to railroad street than take the railroad tracks to olo street than walk olo to get to second ave at fairmount heights where i lived at the time

what was in this mill very good work with the vid

What was that occasional POP?

Wow! That is one huge fire.

A complex of Mills? The property looked to be historic. What was the cause of the fire?

@kylelanctot3344

4 жыл бұрын

Heat from a blow torch it was a 122 year old building

It's a serch engine, same thing as Google! Bing has a translator where you can you kow, translate things.

only 5 minutes of video? had no battery in the cell phone?

I would assume that the City of Woonsocket has more than one aerial ladder, but there again, who am I, to assume anything. Good film footage, thank you.

Based on the look of it this was a very old building probably with an all exposed wood interior, no drywall, fire breaks, dividing fire walls, or a sprinkler system. Hence, the building was an oven with ample fuel. There was saving this building.

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

This was built probably between 1870 and 1890 which was before there was a fire code in Rhode Island. There would have been no drywall because it hadn't been invented yet. These old mills are all one big open room with no walls of any kind on the interior except possibly for offices and there probably wasn't a lot of that. In any case not any plaster. They didn't build these buildings with fire breaks or fire walls as I said, it was just one big room. Sprinkler systems hadn't been invented yet when it was built. This building was most likely unoccupied since prior to the new Rhode Island fire code.

@Renville80

4 жыл бұрын

nunya biznez And I noticed that many of the buildings that went up before the introduction of electricity have a lot more windows than ones put up after.

I remember watching this from the bridge near the YWCA

@acgillespie

9 жыл бұрын

was the village people with you too?

@sharongagnist6428

9 жыл бұрын

Jawn B I live 1 1/2 miles from this location and I saw the flames from my apartment....when did the second mill go up in flames... wasn't that 2012/13??

@MsFiregal8

5 жыл бұрын

@@sharongagnist6428 what were the causes?

Yes, this just happened by my department, in Carlisle, PA. This being brick, probably could of held the fire longer before somebody noticed, making it more hot inside. The wood obviously is the main combustible here I imagine, however I wouldnt know what was on the inside. But yes those houses, the siding was probably melting, and they were getting pocket fires I imagine through out the area.

@bsfv2010

Жыл бұрын

This was in Rhode island

i imagine the wood. If you've ever heard a campfire, you can hear the wood crackle. That's probably what the noise was.

was this a 20 pump fire

Wow, that was a hot one -- Deb

thats massive! wow fire from the top to the very bottom wow

I think the commander pulled units to far away fomr the building. i know the concern was stuctural failure. better to be safe than sorry. I hope the fire fighter injuries were mominor. Do you know the cause? It looks like that building was abondond and boarded up & makes me think posible arson. Thank you for sharing and giving us the link to the full video.

That's like pissing in the wind.

@OneLastHitB4IGo

5 жыл бұрын

Just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, don't it?

How are firefighters?

That is one hell of a fire!

I would send for a full alarm, ladder company, additional crews to evacuate near by buildings that border the fire, Extra Police for road closure, Safety command, I would not let anyone near that building in case of building collapse which is what happen, Cut the Power and electricity around the area.

So where were the foam and water sprinkler systems?

@johnestes5268

8 жыл бұрын

+Chris Ralph when that building was constructed, those systems probably weren't required and were never required afterward

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

LOL, that building was built decades before sprinkler systems were invented. They weren't required in Rhode Island until recently and that building probably has been vacant since new fire codes were put into place.

@TheFireControl

7 жыл бұрын

Sprinklers were commercially available from1890, since then there was half a century at least, for comply retrofitting.

@frmerrin2

5 жыл бұрын

@@TheFireControl Fine you pay for it.

Yeah, the only thing you can do is to keep the fire from spreading outside.

In the fire service, this would be known as a surround and drown. Due to the exposures, the radiant heat...and the embers falling, is why they wanted to dry and hit it. That heat can start up other fires in that area, including other buildings

big time that's the BIGGEST fire i've seen in my entire life!

Damn! It was hot enough to where they had to put water on the houses across the street??

Pretty hot when you gotta hose off the apparatus! nice job guys!

When a structure fire at that sher size is clearly out of control.. The call needs to be made to let it go.

este es el incendio mas grande que e visto en los ultimos tiempos ,un edificio completo se quemo y no se pudo hacer nada !!!

The only way to fight this fire is the first thing make sure there is no exposure problem protect what you can. second let burn the amount of btu generated and the time it will take to set up a water supply and enough apparatus to fight the fire it would be past it's peak. And third make sure the chief has catering trucks at the scene to feed the firefighters.

Now that is an impressive fire..

Reminds me of the Marcal paper plant in Elmwood Park NJ

Sheesh. I am no firefighter but it seems to me that it would be best to set up a perimeter around the burning mill, protect nearby buildings and just let it burn itself out. Is that a fair assessment and strategy? Again, I am not a firefighter.

Not all heroes wear capes.

@mikegallant811

5 жыл бұрын

Some wear turnout gear.

damn, how do you turn something like thiis off!!!

@matthewwindisch9449

3 жыл бұрын

You don’t..

God dam now thats a big ass fire!

nice video man also check out 10 alarm see Jeff stang fire p4 inferno marcal paper factory a must see unbelievable wow

@mikegallant811

4 жыл бұрын

Now that was a motherfucker of a fire..I saw the video here on KZread... Oooooh mama.....

Listen carefully at 1:10 - you can hear in the word-back "The hydrant is welded shut" !!!

Now dangit, guys......JB could've already had this fire out by the time yall showed up.

@CoTreyLoZ

5 жыл бұрын

Fact is, there's no putting one of these old mills out once it gets going.

Woonsocket has had a few of these in the past 10 years, I'm amazed they went in, this is almost always guaranteed to be a total loss regardless. Were there reports of squatters inside or something?

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

I watched this fire in person and the rumor that went around the crowd was that some kids had set a fire in there. One guy kept insisting that there were always kids breaking into the place using it as a hang out

@TheFireControl

7 жыл бұрын

Did they used water from the near river????.

Dam that's a big fire

why would someone weld the hydrant shut? that's an unusual motive Alice Mills Rubber Manufacturing Plant in Woonsocket... keyword rubber

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

Because Woonsocket has water bans in the summer and people steal water so landlords weld the hydrants shut so nobody steals the water. It isn't just a mater of the cost of the water which is relatively low but more importantly the fact that the city will fine you if they catch your meter running past a certain amount on ban days. Fines can add up quickly and can grow to more than the value of the property. That does not make it legal but it does explain why.

They are wetting down the surrounding buildings because of embers and flaming debris falling from the involved structure.

Oh, and BTW, I can confirm that the video of the fire started somewhere around 31:27 in that video.

the fire was so hot that they had to move the rigs away from you building

Damn looks straight outta ladder 49

If you were to let it burn do you have any idea how big that fire would be

@milcaauguste1352

7 жыл бұрын

Even though it's already huge

@justanotherguy1110

7 жыл бұрын

It would definitely be ginormous, but with the amount of material burning, the heat coming off of it. It is theoretically trying to piss into a volcano to put it out. At this point, it didn't really matter how much water they used, the heat from the fire was evaporating the water sprayed on it before it could do anything. Best option is to back away and protect nearby structures the best you can.

I lived on Second Ave. Up the hill from First Ave fire

Agree, they better had to use the water to prevent fire spreads to other buildings if there were any around…

Which fire dept do you work for? This was already a total loss by the time this vid started. They'd have needed at least half the trucks in the city to stop it dead right there.

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

Half? What you saw in the video are ALL the trucks in the city. All engine companies responded to this fire and several from surrounding communities. Engine companies from as far away as Providence and Attleboro responded.

@TheFireControl

7 жыл бұрын

Big river at 750 ft. www.google.cl/maps/dir/42.0051611,-71.5244886/42.0041582,-71.5219024/42.0041039,-71.5217255/@42.0039852,-71.5180253,606a,35y,270h,39.3t/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!4m1!3e0

Arson?

That fire is huge. the heat must have been staggering.

@nunyabiznez6381

7 жыл бұрын

It was, from two blocks away it was 100 degrees. I was dripping with sweat then when one of the walls collapsed I could feel a wave of heat that nearly knocked me to the ground. I was about 600 feet away and moved even further back after that.

1:12....hydrant welded shut....hmmm, thats sumthin that we in the Fire Service would like to know before we get a fire :P

i Live so close to there.

at about 1:15 did that guy say the hydrant was welded shut?!?! 0_o

Yes, that is what I was stating in my previous 2 posts

Did you hear that: "...and get those assholes going down here"? Someone seems to have lost his nerve a bit, didn't he?

A fire that big could not be contained. Sometimes it is better to let it burn down on its own and save surrounding structure's than to use up water and energy fighting a fire that is to big to contain.

I bet they are still fighting the fire.

@sharongagnist6428

9 жыл бұрын

Mr Pippy Long Stocking not that fire but a whole lot more buildings that have burnt down since this fire... I live only 1 1/2 miles from this fire

If your spraying your ladder to keep it cool , you ve parked to close . Did 16 years b t w .

I've seen more fire trucks at smaller fire scenes.

Baked potatoes and marshmallows anyone?