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Forty years ago, on Labor Day, two boys playing with matches unwittingly set a fire that would burn through about 20% of industrial buildings in , a city already under considerable duress.
The fire is among the state’s worst, ranking behind only two others: the 1902 Paterson fire that destroyed more than 400 buildings, including City Hall and the public library, and the 1963 Black Saturday wildfires, which consisted of 37 separate blazes that burned about 183,000 to 190,000 acres of forest, left seven people dead and consumed about 400 buildings.
The Sept. 2, 1985, Labor Day Fire continues to live in the minds of current and retired city firefighters.
Six former textile buildings and 17 multifamily homes are destroyed by fire, forcing the evacuation of 400 people in Passaic, N.J. The blaze on Ninth Street which began around 2:30 p.m. destroyed the facilities of more than 50 manufacturers in the complex along the Passaic River. September 2, 1985
On that day, they say, 2.2 million square feet of industrial spaceburned down, along with a number of houses. It left a decades-old scar on the eastern side of the city that only in recent years has been rebuilt.
Labor Day Fire lives on in firefighters’ memories
Current Passaic Fire Chief Pat Trentacost said his memories of the fire remain vivid. Not yet a firefighter, the then-19-year-old was shopping for furniture with his fiancée when he saw the smoke from Route 17. He said he rushed over and, wearing his father’s old turnout coat, handed out cups of water to the dozens of firefighters who were there to fight the blaze.
His father, Victor, and his uncle Tony were firemen at the time. The day, he said, was bright and sunny but windy, conditions that aided the fire, which very quickly became uncontrollable.
Story continues below photo gallery.
It produced heat so intense that it caused nearby buildings to combust before flames even reached them.
It left 2,000 jobless and hundreds homeless as the conflagration destroyed 17 multifamily homes and scores of businesses. A firefighter from Secaucusdied of a heart attack after responding to the mutual aid call.
More: Some of New Jersey’s worst fires
A year later, Michael Powell, then a staff writer for The Record, wrote this account for the Sunday, Aug. 31, 1986, edition:
“It began with two mischievous children and a book of matches. It ended in an exploding inferno that evoked comparisons to the bombing of London in World War II,” his story reads.
“One year ago, Passaic’s Labor Day fire burned its way into the history books. Two-thousand-degree temperatures and 100-foot-high flames incinerated century-old factories, 21 in all, and 17 apartment buildings and homes as the fire raced through the heart of the city’s industrial district, known as Lower Dundee,” Powell wrote.
“For 12 hours, 150 firefighters from more than a dozen towns poured water on the blaze, but when they were finished, the damage stood at $100 million, and thousands of people were left without jobs or homes. It was a time of despair,” his story reads.
Glenn Corbett, who was a young volunteer firefighter with the Waldwick department at the time of the fire, said he still teaches about it as a professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He also serves on the Fire Code Advisory Council for New Jersey.
“It was the largest fire I have ever seen,” Corbett said.
Six former textile buildings and 17 multifamily homes are destroyed by fire, forcing the evacuation of 400 people in Passaic, N.J. The blaze on Ninth Street which began around 2:30 p.m. destroyed the facilities of more than 50 manufacturers in the complex along the Passaic River. September 2, 1985
Many lessons learned from Labor Day Fire
Corbett and Trentacost said many lessons were learned that day.
More: Look back: Passaic’s Labor Day fire of 1985
Not surprisingly, the water in the hydrants was insufficient, Corbett said. He said water systems are not built for conflagrations.
The blaze also reinforced the importance of ember control, he said. Teams of firefighters are needed in massive fires like the one that took place 40 years ago, to keep burning embers from igniting structures.
Trentacost said the science of fighting fires is constantly evolving, whether through Labor Day or the more recent Marcal, Atlantic Coast and Qualco fires.
“From each catastrophic fire we learn something,” the chief said. “Communications and training are improved. We work on it until the next time we roll out.”
Corbett and Trentacost said the Labor Day Fire cemented the notion that in massive fires, crews consume huge amounts of water. Today, there are teams of firefighters whose sole job is to keep water flowing to hoses, the chief said.
Although in 1985 there was a mutual aid system, it was not as organized as it is today, he said. The radios also are improved and better for coordination among the responding departments.
Since then, Trentacost said, all of Passaic’s apparatus can draft, or draw water from sources such as the Passaic River. They also have better ideas of where water is deep enough to draft, such as the spot underneath the Eighth Street Bridge.
Trentacost said drafting helped during the Atlantic Coast fire.
What was destroyed in the Passaic Labor Day fire of 1985?
The buildings that were destroyed were originally part of Gera Mills, built between 1899 and the World War I era. By the time of the fire, the buildings had been sold and subdivided, and they housed many other companies.
General Chemical Co. was a sizable property owner on both sides of Eighth Street, occupying sites adjacent to both Gera Mills and Acheson Harden Handkerchief Co.
Gilt Edge Folding Boxes owned and occupied the former Acheson Harden property at the time of the fire.
Why did the fire burn out of control?
The major contributing cause of the fire’s spread, Corbett said, was a lack of water.
“When you get a vacant building, landlords shut off the water because they don’t want to pay,” he said.
On that fateful Labor Day, water for the sprinkler systems wasn’t connected, nor was there water in the building’s water towers, and water pressure in the hydrants was woefully inadequate.
The sprinklers hadn’t been tested in years. Improperly stored were more than 22 tons of naphthalene, a flammable chemical used in mothballs and toilet deodorizers, making the site a tinderbox awaiting a spark.
That spark came from a match struck by two boys, ages 12 and 13, lighting a fire in a trash bin in an alleyway.
The fire quickly spread to the massive timbers used to shore up the brick buildings.
Once ignited, the timbers are difficult to put out, and they produce enormous amounts of heat, Trentcost said.
Lower Dundee, the neighborhood where the fire raged, juts out from the city, forming a peninsula nestled in a curve in the Passaic River.
What has become of the land left behind by the Labor Day Fire?
The city later learned just how difficult it would be to rebuild on the land left barren by the fire. For almost 10 years, the city and property owners sparred. One of the last tracts was recently reclaimed and a massive warehouse was built, removing one of the last scars from the fire.
The city initially wanted to build public housing in the area. The landowners wanted to rebuild mixed-use units. Redevelopers came and went. One lot across Eighth Street, once the site of Acheson Harden Handkerchief Co., has been repurposed as a repair site for Verizon.
In 1994, a 60,000-square-foot ShopRite supermarket and strip mall opened on the site that was once Gera Mills. It operated until 2015 before moving across the river in Wallington. Next to it on Eighth Street, where factories once stood, were 10 acres that until a few years back remained an open field, at times overgrown and an invitation to illegal dumping.
In 2021, developer Joe Smouha, the same person who repurposed the Botany Mills site, purchased the 10 acres. He also bought the former ShopRite site and combined the two lots to build a massive warehouse on the 17 acres.
Other fires that left their mark on North Jersey
Still, North Jersey, with the relics of its industrial past still standing in many towns and cities, remains vulnerable to conflagrations.
“The Marcal fire was one,” Trentacost said, as was the 2019 fire at the Straight and Narrow halfway house in Paterson.
The Marcal plant in Elmwood Park burned down on Jan. 30, 2019. The 10-alarm fire destroyed 30 of the 36 buildings on the property and toppled the iconic Marcal sign.
The Paterson fire at the Straight and Narrow counseling center in Paterson displaced about 300.
“It is unlike anything I’ve seen in Paterson,” Mayor Andre Sayegh wrote in a Facebook post at the time. “You’ve got to commend our fire department.”
Still, since the Labor Day Fire, firefighters and prevention officials have taken the lessons to heart and say they devoutly hope that history won’t repeat itself.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Passaic Labor Day Fire started by two boys took place 40 years ago
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