Recent History
In the 1980s the city of Fall River suffered three more huge, disastrous fires. Although nobody was killed in any of these events, the city lost three historically important structures.
On November 5, 1981, the 100-year old Richard Borden Mill on Rodman Street caught fire sometime in the afternoon and burned for many hours through the night. During the massive fire, the Fall River Fire Department poured many thousands of gallons of water on a Shell Gasoline station just next door to the mill at the corner of Plymouth Avenue, preventing a possible explosion that would have created much more damage.
Then, just a few months later, on May 11, 1982, while in the process of a major renovation project, hot sparks from a worker's torch ignited a fire near the roof of the Notre Dame de Lourdes Church in the city's Flint Village section. Fed by high winds and dry roof timbers, the fire spread quickly, soon engulfing the twin copper-clad spires of the church as well as several triple-decker apartment houses across Bedard Street. The raging inferno was so hot, there was nothing the fire department could do but watch and try to prevent other buildings from burning. The high winds made the job ever so difficult, and in the end, the church was a complete loss, along with dozens of neighboring buildings, destroying an entire city block between Bedard Street and Pleasant Street. A new church would be built in the same location in 1986.
Finally, on January 12, 1987, the huge Kerr Mill Complex, also in the city's East End along South Watuppa Pond, was destroyed in a massive inferno that began in the historic 1899 Thread Mill on Eastern Avenue and spread along the entire complex. The mills had been occupied by many companies, and over 900 people suddenly found themselves without jobs. The Kerr Mill site was redeveloped in the late 1990s, and in 2001 the Advanced Technology & Manufacturing Center of UMass-Dartmouth opened its doors at this location. More recently, the MediTech building opened on the western side of the property, with a garage built on the site of the 1899 mill in front of the building.
Read more about this topic: History Of Fall River, Massachusetts
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