At 10:15 am, Sunday, November 13, 2005 - The fire tones went out dispatching Hartford Fire Department to a structure fire at Mann-Metal Company.
Within three minutes, Chief Riley was on scene, his aerial was on scene with four within six minutes. Riley entered the building to find it fully involved.
He immediately called for three other area aerials, and he asked dispatch to tone out an area fourth alarm fire.
The fire was spreading quickly because of the amount of magnesium dust within the heat ducts and the 50+ miles per hour winds which hampered efforts all day long. As other apparatus began showing up on scene, Riley knew the City's water system could not withstand the amount of draw that was needed to begin to battle this raging blaze.
Billowing black smoke could be seen for miles around.
Tankers were dispatched to begin pulling water from two separate sources.
One being directly from one of the City's main wells and other from the nearby Paw Paw river.
Tanker's shuttled more than 3,000,000 gallons of water and the City wells pumped more than 2,200,000 gallons of water.
Ten other departments provided man power and equipment to assist this monster.
There were many community volunteers that assisted in directing traffic, assisting apparatus to routes around the City for their shuttle efforts and making sure that fire fighters had food, drinks and a place to get out of winds.
The fact that Mann-Metal is a major employer for the area, made fire fighters extremely saddened by the total loss of the building.
Mother nature hampered those efforts with her winds that drove the fire from one end of the building to the other.
