Feb. 20--WATERTOWN, NY-- Two city firefighters were injured Monday when a wall collapsed while multiple fire crews were battling a massive blaze in a large storage building on Newell Street.
The two unidentified firefighters were taken by ambulance to Samaritan Medical Center, one on a stretcher. Fire Chief Dale C. Herman confirmed one of the injured firefighters was later transferred to a Syracuse hospital.
The extent of the injuries and their conditions were unknown Monday night. Their families were notified, Chief Herman said.
Shortly before 6 p.m., crews were called to the sprawling building at 108 Newell St. that sits behind Derouin Plumbing & Heating Inc. and next to Adirondack River Outfitters.
A cause of the fire was not known Monday night. However, a state fire investigator arrived on the scene and planned to start looking into its cause this morning, Chief Herman said.
"We'll start looking at it in the daylight," he said.
Using three ladder trucks and other apparatus, about 30 firefighters from the city of Watertown, town of Watertown and Fort Drum were called to the scene.
The two firefighters were fighting the blaze from across a small parking lot when a section of the building that was on fire collapsed, sending bricks flying across the parking lot and striking the firefighters, said witness Todd Phelps.
Their colleagues and police officers at the scene immediately ran toward the injured firefighters to help, multiple witnesses said.
Afterward, it appeared between a 15- to 20-foot section of the wall and a part of the roof at the back of the 27,000-square-foot brick structure collapsed, some of it falling into the Black River.
Mr. Phelps, who owns Black River Adventurer's Shop next door, was among a dozen people watching it all from across the street on Black River Parkway when the wall collapsed. He knew immediately what happened.
"We heard the bricks falling," he said. "It just blew out."
A little earlier, Mr. Phelps was on the roof of his three-story building taking video of the firefighters while doing what they could to extinguish the blaze. He noticed the two firefighters using hoses to deluge the flames on the northeast side of the building before the wall collapsed.
When he arrived, much of the building was on fire and firefighters immediately took a defensive stance to fight the blaze, Chief Herman said.
"Visible flames were seen at the front of the building and when I walked around the building, flames were visible from two floors and a lower floor at the back of the building," Chief Herman said.
With the river bank at the back of the building, firefighters could only battle the monstrous blaze from the front, leaving 20-foot-tall flames shooting out from the back.
About 45 minutes before the wall collapsed, Jim Heise, who has fished in that area of the Black River, said he saw white smoke while standing on Mill Street and then realized small pieces of the structure were falling into the river.
The building has been owned by Samaritan Medical Center for more than 20 years, according to hospital spokeswoman Krista A. Kittle.
"We use it for maintenance storage, sheet rock storage for upcoming projects, things like that," she said.
Ms. Kittle said that the hospital has moved items out of the building over the last few years.
Samaritan officials told Chief Herman that the power to the building was turned off about a year ago, but he would not speculate how that might play into how the fire started.
Firefighters were expected to be at the scene all night. Off-duty firefighters were called in and a handful of other departments were on standby.
For a few hours, pockets of onlookers gathered across the street. People in nearby businesses also watched what was unfolding.
Liam Elsworth, 12, and a handful of friends were riding their bikes through the area when they noticed smoke coming out of the one-story section of the building.
Within a few minutes, the smoke was so thick it teared up his eyes and caused motorists to have difficulty seeing while they drove down nearby Mill Street, he said.
In between waiting on customers at Mr. Sub, Mary Lou Farone watched from a back window as the entire first floor was engulfed in flames.\
"We were watching for a while," she said.
Her daughter, April McGuire, was down the street at a yoga class when the fire broke out. Class members watched what was going on for about 10 minutes before returning to their workout, she said.
Video from the scene of the fire can be viewed at http://wdt.me/NewellStreetFire.
Times staff writer Gordon Block contributed to this story.
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