WPBFD History

1967, the A.I.O. pointed out the following deficien- cies of the station: 1) the location of the station re- sulted in delayed response to fire alarms because of traffic congestion, 2) the ramps leading to the street were too short, and 3) the overhead doors were too narrow and low. The door problem had posed a prob- lem in 1963 when the con- crete floor of one bay had been torn out so a new Snorkel truck could be housed in the station. The

tired from service. He had been the right arm for four different fire chiefs over a forty-three year period, and his administrative skills had played a major roll in the success of the department. The city commission honored three fire depart- ment retirees on January 3. Certificates of appreciation were presented to Lingenfelter, Maurice J. Sachs (28 years), and Aus- tin Bennett (25 years). A spectacular photo-

Avon Road warehouse fire.

letter didn't mention that there was insufficient space for the number of personnel on duty, no room for expansion of the facility, and most of the interior had still not yet been finished. One of the worst duties for firemen at Central Sta- tion was the watch. All non-officers had to sit a two hour watch during the day and another two hour watch during the night. Duties included answering all business and emergency calls for the department on the switchboard, a relic from Southern Bell's distant past. The eight-foot long console had fifty plugs attached to cords which were used to relay incoming calls to the proper destination. A blinking red light on the console would indicate which line an incoming call was on. After answering and find- ing out who the call was for, the watchman would take a cord and plug it into the corresponding outlet. He would then plug another cord into the outlet for the call's desti- nation and flip a switch to ring the extension. When the telephones were hung-up, the lights went out and the watchman unplugged the cords.

graph appeared in the Thursday, February 2, 1967, edition of the Palm Beach Post . Flames rolled out the front of a wood frame warehouse and leapt skyward. Black clouds of smoke filled the background. The fire occurred just before 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon at 425 Avon Road. Five pumpers, an aerial truck, and forty-two fire- fighters converged on the scene. Matters were initially complicated by a long freight train that rumbled by, fan- ning the flames as units arrived. The fire was so hot that it ignited railroad ties on the nearby tracks. Power poles and buildings on the other side of the railroad were also scorched. Robert D. Hennessy and Eugene B. Borino suffered second degree burns on their faces as they fought to con- trol the blaze. Both were treated by a doctor on the fire ground. The fire in the vacant warehouse was started by unknown vagrants who had been cooking meals in the building. It was 4:00 p.m. before the last pumper cleared the scene. The Central Fire

Station that had been built in 1948, without any assistance from Chief Sadler, began to haunt the current fire department administra- tion and city officials. The American Insur- ance Organization, for- merly known as the Na- tional Board of Fire Un- derwriters, had recently reviewed the fire de- fenses in order to set fire insurance rates. In a letter to the depart- ment dated April 19,

At times the console looked like a plate of spaghetti with all the cords intertwined. Hardly a day went by without someone acci- dentally disconnecting the chief in the middle of a conversation. The watchman dis- patched emergency calls by depressing a lever three times to send out the alert tone, a high pitched beep-beep-beep, over the radio system.

Bobby Jordan (215) at the Avon warehouse fire. 7