When fire feasted on the Ro-Mac’s building last week – it seemed like one of the worst downtown blazes in memory. But how quickly we forget. 11 years ago there was a fire that ranks as one of the city’s worst. We dug into our archives to look at it.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
When fire ripped through the heart of the city one week ago – there’s no forgetting how ferocious and consuming it was as it easily devoured a landmark of the city’s commercial center – and by Saturday even the name that once help define Albert Street was reduced to rubble.
Seems like the unforgettable fire, but in the disposable era, every image no matter how enduring it may appear in the present, will someday be forgotten – and we know this because many are calling the Ro-Mac’s fire the worst downtown blaze ever – or at least comparable to the worse: This was the fire, 11 years ago, 19th June 1997, right on Albert street at its junction with Prince street.
And while the Albert Street view was indelible, this fire started behind those structures on Prince Street eating through the block consuming wooden homes – and jumping across to the other block where there were more wooden homes. This is the view from Prince Street as the side of the Mikado Building burnt. But what we will remember is Albert Street and how it was humble, the fire belching black smoke across the night.
And we will remember also how it raged from night right through to daybreak and eventually morning when Albert Street looked like a Baghdad bomb zone – flattened and rubbished.
We needed images to remind us how bad it was but for the Fire Chief who fought it, his mind was clear.
Henry Baizar, Fire Chief
“The one of 1998 was a bit larger than this. It consumed much more dwelling houses. This one is mostly businesses and what not and most of it is one huge complex for Ro-Mac’s. A few other businesses got damaged like the couple on Church Street but other than that, it is a bit smaller than the 1998 fire.”
So yes, the Ro-Mac’s fire was smaller and less harmful – it did leave many jobless, the Prince and Albert Street fire left so many more homeless.
In that 1997 blaze, fire authorities found that it had been started behind the Mikado and Galaxy Stores within the Prince Street block where a man was cooking crack cocaine in a wooden shack – and it caught on fire. In last weeks’ Ro-Mac’s fire, no cause has been determined yet, but the Fire Department has collected samples of materials from the fire and will be sending it abroad for testing in the United States. The results of similar tests recently demonstrated that the Free Zone fire of September 2007was most likely a case of arson.
