WORCESTER ― Twenty-five years ago this Tuesday, the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. fire stunned the nation.

For it was on that night that firefighters Paul A. Brotherton, Timothy P. Jackson, Jeremiah M. Lucey II, James F. “Jay” Lyons III, Joseph T. McGuirk and Thomas E. Spencer sacrificed their lives to try to save the others, six courageous men whose names the city will never forget.

The last time the United States lost half a dozen firefighters in a disaster before December 3, 1999, was more than five years earlier, on July 6, 1994, when 14 firefighters perished in a wildfire in the South Canyon Fire in Colorado.

Even today, the Worcester Fire remains the fifth deadliest firefighting disaster in the United States in the past 25 years.

On Tuesday, as it has on Dec. 3 each year since 1999, the city will mark the death of the “Worcester 6,” who lost their lives inside a 93-year-old abandoned warehouse at 266 Franklin St. while searching two homeless people would find themselves in the heart of the raging inferno.

With a 25th anniversary ceremony at the site of the fire, now the Franklin Street Fire Station, the city will remember, appreciate and honor these men with the same love and respect as Worcester and the nation did when they perished.

More: Front pages of T&G covering the 1999 Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse fire

A brief remembrance for Lt. Spencer, 42, Lt. Lyons, 34, and Firefighter McGuirk, 38, all of Worcester; firefighter Brotherton, 41, of Auburn; Lt. Jackson, 51, of Hopedale; and firefighter Lucey, 38, of Leicester, will take place Tuesday at 6 p.m.

All entered the virtually windowless building without hesitation, never to be seen alive again.

The commemoration, open to all, will take place at the fire station memorial. This will include a moment of silence, the laying of a wreath and the sounds of Worcester Fire Department pipes and drums.

Archives Fire in a cold room: T&G story from December 4, 1999

The cold storage fire started when a homeless couple knocked over a lit candle. Firefighters first entered the vacant warehouse, thinking the couple was still inside, and found themselves trapped in the sprawling brick building. It turned out the couple had left the building.

The five-alarm fire broke out at 6:13 p.m. after an off-duty police officer called to report gray and white smoke coming from the roof of the building. At the same time, an off-duty Auburn firefighter driving on Interstate 290 radioed that smoke was coming from the roof of the building.

The composition of the building’s interior insulation was highly flammable and firefighters were unfamiliar with the layout of the warehouse.

Its walls and ceilings were covered with insulating cork, tar, expanded polystyrene foam and sprayed polyurethane foam.

There were no firewalls or fire doors, and only one staircase from the basement to the roof.

Two firefighters were initially trapped inside the building, and the four others who intervened to save them suffered the same fate.

It took eight days before firefighters, physically and emotionally exhausted, working literally around the clock and searching room by room through the smoldering rubble, found the remains of the last missing man. Even though President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and 30,000 firefighters from across the country attended a memorial service on December 9, 1999, at the Worcester Centrum, now the DCU Center, for the six fallen men, approximately 20 researchers remained on site. ruins and continued their efforts.

At the memorial service, Clinton, who spoke last, quoted from the Bible.

“In the book of Isaiah, God asks, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” And Isaiah said, “Here I am.” Send me,” Clinton said. “When the question rang out from the smoking heavens again last week, Paul Brotherton, Timothy Jackson, Jeremiah Lucey, Jay Lyons, Joseph McGuirk and Thomas Spencer also responded with one voice: “Here I am. Send me.”

Next, Worcester Mayor Raymond V. Mariano addressed the city’s children during his speech.

“If you’re looking for a hero, a role model,” Mariano said, “you don’t have to look far. You see, a hero is not someone who hits home runs or scores touchdowns in front of thousands of supporters. fans… A hero is a firefighter who rushes into a burning building without thinking about himself.

When the ordeal that forever changed the city was over, a fire official called the warehouse that claimed the lives of six of his fellow firefighters “the building from hell.”

Today, five of Brotherton’s six sons — Brian, David, Michael, Steven and Timothy Brotherton — are Worcester firefighters, along with Spencer’s son Danny Spencer and Lucey’s son Jerry Lucey III, for a total of seven son of Worcester6.

The Franklin Street Fire Station, built on the site of the fire, opened on November 19, 2008.

The death of Worcester 6 marked the first line of duty fatality for Worcester firefighters since 1962, when firefighter Anthony J. Annunziata, 27, died after battling a fire at the former Northridge Furniture Co. on Southbridge Street.

Since then, there have been three separate deaths of firefighters in the line of duty: Jon D. Davies, Sr., 43, in 2011; Christopher Roy, 36, in 2018; and Lt. Jason Menard, 39, in 2019. All three were battling fires in three-story buildings at the end of the year.

This article was originally published on Telegram & Gazette: Worcester 6 remembers 1999 cold storage and warehouse fire