In the early morning hours of December 3, 2013, Boston Box 711 was struck for a building fire at 327 Summer Street. First to arrive, TL-3 reported smoke showing from the fifth floor of a large commercial building. As companies entered the building, imaging cameras showed very high heat coming from the basement level. Extreme caution was used by interior companies and in short order, companies were withdrawn and eight alarms were struck.
Videos from the fire showed heavy fire blowing out from the first floor of the building. The fire broke out at 4:30 in the morning but I didn’t find out until I got out of bed at 7. I was planning on going to Boston that day anyway, so as I was getting into the city, crews were reporting that they still had moderate smoke conditions and visible fire around the columns of the second and third floor. The building was five stories from the Summer Street side but six stories from the rear alley.
I arrived shortly after 10, 6 hours into operations. There were numerous ladders set up on Summer Street and several engines and a ladder set up in the rear alley. In the last photo, oddly in 20+ years of shooting is one of my favorites, you can see streams being played from the building across the alley into the upper levels of the fire building. These two angles were the only ones that weren’t blocked by fire lines when I arrived. The rest of the photos are on my site, www.northeastfirephotos.smugmug.com
Tom Carmody
Tom Carmody photo
Tom Carmody photo
Tom Carmody photo
Tom Carmody photo
Tom Carmody photo
Tom Carmody photo