4-alarm fire hits City Hall

4-alarm fire hits City Hall Records safe, no injuries By TONY MULDOON Of the Courier-Post CAMDEN — An intense four-alarm fire shortly before 2 a.m. today damaged the purchasing and building maintenance department offices on the 14th floor of City Hall. Although the fire was contained within the offices of county building superintendent James Hainsworth and purchasing agent John M. Kennedy on the northwest corner of the 14th floor, four alarms were struck. Battalion Chief John Giuliano explained he feared he might have to evacuate the 320 prisoners being held in the Camden County Jail seven floors below. One firefighter suffered a minor leg injury, said Giuliano. Radio station WSSJ, located on the 18th floor, was evacuated and off the air for an hour. The greatest danger, other than to personnel, was to the critical records stored in Kennedy's office, county officials said. County business could have been thrown into almost hopeless confusion had those records been lost, said Camden County Sheriff William J. Simon. "Those guys did a hell of a job," Simon said of the firefighters. "That whole floor could have gone." Simon and his staff are working on alternative fire evacuation plans for the jail, whose population is nearly double the 175 inmates it was designed to accommodate. Courier-Post photo by Martha Schaller Firemen examine damage caused by a smoky four-alarm blaze on the 14th floor of Camden City Hall shortly before 2 a.m. today. Please see 4-ALARM, Page 9A 4-alarm fire ravages 2 county offices in City Hall Continued from Page 1A Both the purchasing agent's office and the building superintendent's office were expected to be able to continue functioning without much inconvenience, said county officials, although Hainsworth's department will have to move to a temporary office in the 18-story building. No prisoners were evacuated. The cause of the fire was unknown early this morning, said Camden County Fire Marshal David Aron. The fire was detected by the building's smoke detection system and reported by security officers at 1:50 a.m. Subsequent alarms were struck at 1:58 a.m., 2:11 a.m., and 2:24 a.m., according to county fire officials. The fire was delcared under control at 2:42 a.m. The fire may have been smoldering since about 1 a.m. WSSJ announcer E.A. Wood said he smelled what he thought was smoke around 1 a.m. but did not realize it was from a fire in the same building. Also, Wood said a police officer told him another officer thought he saw smoke coming from the building at the same time. Apparently, the smoke was so wispy at that time that nobody realize it was a fire. "I smelled smoke up here, not realizing it was a fire, at around 1 o'clock," said Wood. "I went downstairs, I had a long record on at the time. At that time there was very little smoke coming up." As the smoke wafted upward, Wood and fellow announcer Carlos Cruz had to open the doors to the radio station. They were eventually forced to evacuate and WSSJ was off the air from 2:15 a.m. to 3:15 a.m., said Wood. Almost all city fire equipment was committed. Firefighters from Gloucester City, Westmont and Oaklyn responded to fill in at city fire stations, and Cherry Hill sent an air compressor unit to refill firefighters' air packs. Firefighters were briefly delayed in reaching the heart of the fire, said Capt. John Dimaggio, because the water standpipe to which hoses were to be connected was located inside the burning office. Firefighters had to go to a standpipe on the 13th floor and carry their hoses back up to the 14th only to be stymied by a locked fire door. They had to knock the steel door off its hinges and then batter it out of the doorway to enter the 14th floor. The door can only be opened from the inside, county officials explained. It is designed to block entrance from the fire escape stairway to help provide security for the records stored in Kennedy's office. Firefighters and county officials were concerned about the difficulty of opening the fire door from the stairwell. They said they would meet later to resolve the access problem without compromising the security of the records stored in Kennedy's office. That the fire did not spread was credited to the stout firewalls built into the 50-year-old structure. This morning's blaze was the first major fire in the building since Feb. 2, 1973, said Simon. That fire was set by rioting jail inmates protesting restrictions placed on them by jail authorities. There were no injuries in that fire, but the disturbance forced the evacuation of 1,600 county and city workers.