CENTRAL BLOCK - 1953

On Aug. 29, 1953, flames toppled the Central Block in downtown Pueblo, Colorado, and destroyed the neighboring McCarthy Building.

O.G. Pope, 88, an attorney who had an office and apartment in the red sandstone block, was the sole fatality. 

As the masonry crumbled, "We started running fast. Don't know where, just fast," said C.C. Wood, a Pueblo fire captain. 

Speaking in a 1990 interview, retired Pueblo firefighter John Mikus said the blaze "was kind of a mixed-up affair. The chiefs weren’t there as they were all at a fire chiefs’ convention. There was a new crew at the Central Station. Since they were new, they shouldn’t have gone out – they didn’t know where everything was. They even hooked onto the wrong plug."

In an interview with the Pueblo Chieftain, photographer William "Bud" Hawkins, who snapped an award-winning photograph of a falling wall, recalled: ”It wasn’t even going good when I got there. I took a lot of pictures and thought it looked like a dry run but then it took off."

The Central Block housed the Cosmopolitan and Grand hotels, the Western Union telegraph office and a variety of businesses. It was erected in 1890. The McCarthy Building was built in 1891. The structures were located at First and Main streets. 

"The Central Block was pretty tall and it was built to burn: There were offices all around the outside edge and an oval thing (ground floor-to-roof rotunda) in the middle so you could walk around on all the floors and look down," Hawkins recalled. "That was like a flue.”

Writing in Fire Engineering in 2012, Ronald Spadafora, a New York City firefighter, noted "an atrium allows the builder to take advantage of available sunlight and provide enhanced ventilation" but "also provides a horizontal and vertical pathway for fire and the products of combustion."

Mr. and Mrs. T. A. Cross, who lived in an apartment in the Central Block, were awakened by the crackling of flames, The Rocky Mountain News said, and Mrs. Cross went to Mr. Pope’s apartment to warn him.

Pope told her “this fire doesn't amount to much” and went back to his bedroom, the News said. Shortly thereafter, a firefighter said he heard Pope screaming, but couldn't reach him.

After the fire was out, firefighters requested a steam shovel to comb the ruins for Pope's remains.

The blaze started shortly after 3 a.m. and spread to a paint store, setting off hundred of gallons of paint and other chemicals. 

A spectator described it as a "giant blowtorch."

Pueblo Fire Chief Ed Chief Colglazier praised police Patrolman Raymond Marshall for rousing tenants of the Grand Hotel and Assistant Fire Chief Charles DiPalma for doing the same at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, the News said.