Fast-moving Boston fire left little hope for rescue
Apr. 14--In three minutes, you could brew a pot of coffee. Ride the T from Arlington to Park Street. Scan the headlines of this newspaper.
Normally, a house doesn't burn down in just three minutes.
But that's all it took for firefighters to arrive at 154 West Sixth St. in South Boston last Sunday and find the attic floor already virtually incinerated and the little beige rowhouse nearly gutted from front to back.
Such a quick response to a burning home would usually give firefighters plenty of time to save the people within. But the old wood-framed building became a tinderbox in the time it took for firefighters to arrive.
There were no doors inside the home, from room to room, that would have naturally slowed the spread of flames. Mattresses strewn about the floors went up quickly. Likely doused with some sort of accelerant, the house didn't stand a chance. Neither did the angel-eyed sisters who were trapped in the attic.
"They were probably dead when we got there," said Capt. Joe Casper of Ladder 19.
For the 75 jakes who waded into the torched shell of a home last week, the bitter reality is that it was over before they even arrived for Acia Johnson, 14, and her 3-year-old sister Sophia.
"Coming over Broadway, you could see the sky aglow," said firefighter Artie Brown, the driver on Engine 2. "From the sidewalk to the sky, it was nothing but a sheet of fire."
Days after the blaze, as arson investigators were still combing through the charred shell of a building, firefighters sat down to discuss the inferno. In a series of interviews in South Boston's East Fourth Street and D Street stations, both less than a mile from the doomed house, the jakes described in horrifying detail what it was like to search desperately for two young girls. They spoke of wading blindly through debris on their hands and knees, picking up every doll and toy within reach hoping it was the toddler.
"I have a 13-year-old daughter," Casper said. "I live in the town. You see all these things you associate with kids and you're wondering if you know them."
The image of Pop Warner gear flickered in and out of view after Casper climbed through the second-story window.
Lt. William Donovan and firefighter Kevin Foley were the first inside. They furiously extinguished the first-floor flames, but the fire was unrelenting.
"The fire they'd already knocked out reignited," said Max Beichel of Engine 39, who could feel his face scalding even as he hooked up a hydrant outside upon arrival. "So they were stuck on the second floor with fire behind them."
Firefighter Kevin Morrissey rooted through piles of clothes looking in the laundry room for the kids.
And as firefighters from Ladder 19 stood perched on the second-floor stairwell and poked their heads up to the attic, all that surrounded was a red-hot tide.
It was after the blaze was knocked down but while the walls still smoldered that a firefighter peered through an infrared lense through the dense smoke and found what they hoped they would not see. Through the lense, they found the children's bodies huddled in a closet without a door -- big sister sprawled protectively over her little sister.
Now, there are plenty of suspicions, but very few answers. In the end, said District 6 Fire Chief Ronald Marston said, "I just don't know how it got so bad so quick."
jvansack@bostonherald.com
