Fire Ruins Five Stores at Paoli Shopping Center

by Richard Sheeran and Harry Belinger

A general alarm fire roared out of control for 3½ hours in the Paoli Shopping Center early today and destroyed five stores before some 250 firemen managed to bring the blaze under control.

Four firemen were injured battling the flames that spread quickly through the stores in the seven-year-old shopping center on the Lincoln Highway, just east of route 202 in Paoli.

Firemen conquered the fire when they set up a fast-moving "bucket brigade" to remove a quantity of highly inflamable paint stored in the basement of a Sherwin-Williams paint store.

The firemen removed the paint and fled from the store just before the roof of the one-story bulding collapsed.

Jay Spatz, chief of the Paoli Fire Company, said the blaze apparently had been smoldering for some time before it was discovered by a passing motorist at 12:30 a.m.

Spatz said the fire apparently started in the rear of Deever’s Men’s and Boys’ Shop, a clothing store. He said the flames were shooting out of the roof and the front windows, which had shattered from the heat, when the first firemen arrived.

Spatz said the flames, fanned by a 10 mph wind, quickly spread to the next four adjoining stores. They were the Helen Ware Women’s Dress Shop; Dick’s Paoli Delicatessen; Quaker City Laundry Inc., and the paint store.

The roofs of all five one-story cinderblock and stone buildings collapsed as firemen, mounted on aerial ladders or on the roofs of nearby stores, poured tons of water on the blaze.

Two other buildings, the Hardware Center and a state liquor store on either end of the five burnt-out stores, suffered only smoke damage.

Spatz said the firemen were able to contain the blaze at these two points because of firewalls. He said the other five stores were “just like one big open room” becuse there were inadequate firewalls.

The blaze, which was brought under control at 4 a.m., attracted several hundred spectators and police were forced to detour traffic around the area. The cause was not immediately determined. No estimate of the damage was available.

Two of the injured firemen, Michael McGuri, 26, of 126 Calvarese Lane, Wayne, and Carl Green, 24, of 841 Old Lancaster Road, were treated at Bryn Mawr Hospital for smoke inhalation. Two other firemen were treated at the scene for minor cuts.

Eleven fire companies repsonded to the general alarm, including some from as far away as Newtown Square and Merion-Ardmore.

Philadelphia Daily News 5/29/1962