5/6/1948

In the late 1800's, the McLean Seminary for Young Ladies was constructed near the intersection of present-day Hopmeadow Street and Seminary Road in Simsbury. By 1948, the structure located near what was then Main Street and Seminary Hill Road, had been converted to a boarding house and was home for twenty-four people. On May 6, 1948, flames erupted from the roof of the building beginning what would be a memorable fire.

A tree surgeon working on the grounds next to the building got into his car and started down Main Street to presumably turn in the alarm. En route, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and lost consciousness. His car zig-zagged across the street, grazed a pole and a tree, then came to rest on the lawn of a home.

The first alarm was turned in by Mrs. John Light and Mrs. Herbert Saunders who lived on Seminary Hill Road and could see the roof ablaze from that elevation. They then hurried down and warned the occupants who did not the know that the roof above them was in flames. Occupants of the structure, with the aid of students from the nearby high school, were able to save practically all of the their belongings.

It appeared for a time that the fire could not be halted because a lack of water pressure. Pressure dropped in other hydrants as soon as the first ones were opened. When the Tariffville Volunteer Fire Company hooked-up to a hydrant, they could not get sufficient water pressure to throw a stream. About that time, the Lost Acres Fire Department arrived from Granby, drove to a brook a quarter-mile away, set up a draft, and relayed water back to the Tariffville company who then provided another strong stream to fight the fire with.

Chief of the Department Lea Hutchinson remarked that the ladders which had been recently purchased were a factor is fighting the blaze. Without them he said, water could not have been thrown to the roof of the four-story building.

Firefighters had to break holes though the third-floor ceiling to send water against the flames. Working in the smoke, Simsbury Firefighter John Mirick was overcome, but revived quickly when other firefighters took him to a window and held him in the fresh air.

The flames had started on the roof near the north gable and worked southward under the shingles. Chief Hutchinson stated that the conflagration probably started from a spark from a fire in which tree branches were being burned on the grounds.