Firefighters and others share their memories of a tragic Thanksgiving Day fire.
From left to right: Danny Jarboe, Alan Noznesky, Wayne McBride, and Stefan Gansert
See previous STATter 911 coverage of this fire
Thanksgiving Day in 1987 broke a lot of hearts in Prince George’s County, Maryland. A day for families to be together had barely started when one family found itself changed forever.
Around 7:30 a.m., three young children inside of 203 69th Street in Seat Pleasant, lit a foam cushion on fire while playing with matches in the living room of the two-story home. Not being able to put the fire out, they left the room and returned to their bedrooms without telling any of the adults in the house about the fire. There were 15 members of the family of James and Annie Mae Williams inside the home, many of them sleeping.
A short while later, Corporal Wayne McBride, a Prince George’s County Police K-9 officer, saw a plume of smoke in the Seat Pleasant area. Following it, he found himself face to face with screaming people and a house shooting flames from many windows. McBride, also a volunteer firefighter in nearby District Heights, tried to get to the trapped children.
About the same time, Seat Pleasant volunteer Alan Noznesky was asleep in the bunk room at Company 8. He soon found himself being rudely awakened by the cold air as he road toward the burning home aboard Seat Pleasant’s open cab Pirsch. Coming from the opposite direction, Stefan Gansert, a volunteer firefighter from the Chapel Oaks VFD.
All three men tried hard to get to the 6 children who couldn’t get out on their own. They failed. But they would soon learn from Danny Jarboe, who led the investigative team looking into the cause of the fire, that it was unlikely any of the children were still alive by the time Wayne McBride first reached the scene.
All four men were brought together on Wednesday by the Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department. Along with Chief Lawrence Sedgwick, who was one of the fire investigators assigned to that fire, they recalled the tragedy.
The event also looked at the department’s 20-year effort, started that day, to visit neighborhoods where fires have occurred, making sure all homes have working smoke detectors. (To learn more about the program, click here.)
Danny Jarboe is now retired. Wayne McBride is also retired from the police department, but has a second career as the deputy director of the Prince George’s County Public Safety Communications Center. Alan Noznesky is a captain with the DC Fire & EMS Department. Stefan Gansert is a career firefighter in Fairfax County, VA and also a volunteer division chief with PGFD.
I have taken my interviews with these men and mixed it with the news coverage from 1987. You can see that, here.
The first EMS crew to arrive at the fire at Seat Pleasant included Laurie Gilman. Laurie and I first met when she was a volunteer in Clinton and I was at Oxon Hill. We were in EMT class together and later were in the first group of civilian dispatchers hired by PGFD. She is a good friend who wrote me this email about the 69th Street fire.
Every Thanksgiving Day I think of that fire and that family especially the grandmother. I remember pulling up with Co. 8 coming in the other direction and there she was coming up the street toward me screaming for her 10 year old son Josh and her grand babies. Since you were a part of the happy day my Josh was born you can understand how she tore at me heart strings that morning. Fire was just exploding from all the windows and the doors. Family members were running and screaming everywhere and I never felt so helpless in all my life. I knew those six little babies would never get out alive. Co. 8 and Rescue One, the unit I was on, were first on the scene and we ended up using Rescue One as a triage vehicle to treat and send the family members to the hospital. But what do you say to in a situation like that,there is nothing that could ever take away their devastation that morning. I don’t know how any of us bucked up and did our jobs while our hearts were screaming and our anger at ourselves growing because we couldn’t save these 6 precious babies. We are the Fire Department and we are the supposed to save people, we expect ourselves to perform miracles and don’t want to accept less. That’s our job and I know that every person there that morning wavered back and forth between great sorrow in their heart and anger at themselves because that is what we do when we can’t save everyone. That is the heart of the Fire Department, that is what we all share and if you haven’t been a part of it you can never quite understand it. You and I were on some fires together as volunteers and I know you understand and I was glad you were there reporting that day. I also want that family to know they have never been forgotten, at least not by me, especially little Josh.
