One Meridian Plaza - Fire

Fire

On February 23, 1991, at about 8:23 PM, a fire began on the 22nd floor of the building. It was a Saturday night and there were only three people in the building at the time, an engineer and two security guards. Workers had been refinishing woodwork in a vacant office earlier in the day and workers left a pile of rags soaked in linseed oil on the floor. The linseed oil oxidized and generated enough heat to ignite the rags which then set fire to other solvents nearby. Smoke detectors did not cover the entire floor and by the time the fire alarm went off the fire was already well established. After the fire alarm sounded in the building the engineer went up to the 22nd floor to investigate. When the elevator reached the 22nd floor the engineer found heavy smoke and heat which prevented him from reaching the elevator controls he needed to return to the lobby. The engineer escaped after radioing to a security guard in the lobby to recall the elevator using fire safety controls there. The second security guard was on the 30th floor when the alarm went off and used the stairwell to get to the ground floor.

The lobby guard returned a call to the alarm monitoring service which had called when the alarm initially went off to confirm that there was a fire, but never called the Philadelphia Fire Department. The first call came from someone on the street who saw smoke coming from the building. During the first 911 call, at about 8:27 PM, the alarm company alerted the fire department to the fire. Engine 43 was the first firefighting unit to arrive at the scene and reported seeing heavy smoke and flames in one of the windows. As firefighters started fighting the fire it had grown with flames breaking through windows and lapping up the side of the building.