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

@@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.

@@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

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

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Perfect analogy.

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

Still an empty lot in 2018

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The description states more than 20.

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).

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

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

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

***** 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.

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

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.

nunya biznez agreed

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.

EskimoJoe492 clearly an arson

dorenda dient

disney

dorenda

This was in Rhode island

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

was the village people with you too?

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??

@@sharongagnist6428 what were the causes?

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

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.

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

@@TheFireControl Fine you pay for it.

Some wear turnout gear.

Even though it's already huge

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.

It's called extra manpower to relieve people working.

By standing around? o_0

Well they could lye down in their fire trucks or jog in place I suppose. but Grey man is correct. You always send 4-5 times as many fire fighters as you have equipment available. This is to rotate the fire fighters into and out of position. This is standard modern fire fighting practice. I'm sorry that you don't understand how this works.

its called 2 in 2 out, so if someone gets trapped, injured, or need help rescuing there is always more help. with this it turned in to protecting exposures because there was no saving the structure, there are only so many handlines and master stream devices so you end up with extra hands. extra hands are good for when someone gets tired theres someone else to take over. it looks like people standing around but their there for good reason

No, it's just your perception because you don't understand how firefighting works

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.

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.

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.

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