VALENTINE'S DAY, NYC

Photo: nyfd.com

On Valentine's Day 1958, four members of the New York City Fire Patrol and two members of the New York City Fire Department were killed in a building collapse in a section of Lower Manhattan called ``Hell's Hundred Acres.''

The incident was the deadliest in the fire patrol's history.

Box 66-334 for fire at 137-9 Wooster Street was transmitted at 10:15 p.m. and went to five alarms.

Flames extended thorough open shafts, gnawing at timber supports inside the six-story loft building, which stored paper bales.    

The men of Patrol 1 were spreading salvage covers and the firefighters from Ladder 1 and Ladder 10 were venting the roof when the structure gave way.

These are the names of the dead:

Sergeant Michael McGee, Patrol 1, married (according to the Associated Press)
Patrolman Louis Brusati, Patrol 1, married with two children
Patrolman James Devine, Patrol 1, married with two children
Patrolman Michael Tracey, Patrol 1, married three months

Firefighter Bernard Blumenthal, Ladder 10, married three weeks
Firefighter William Schmid, Ladder 1

In the search for their fallen comrades, patrolmen and firefighters contended with flare-ups from smoldering paper bales beneath the debris.

Less than a decade earlier, on Oct. 15, 1949, a building collapse on West 17th Street claimed the lives of  two patrolmen, Daniel Shea and Frederick Lehman.