Last updated: Monday, February 22, 2016, 11:26 AM Young firefighters, fresh out of the academy, used to ask Lenny Worthy about the plaque on the wall of his North Philadelphia firehouse. The one with the photos of the Center City skyscraper, consumed in flames.

On a crisp February night 25 years ago, a bucket of linseed oil-soaked cleaning rags burst into flames on the 22nd floor of One Meridian Plaza, a high-rise office building on 15th Street, across the street from City Hall.

It should have been easy to reach and easy to put out. But most of the building had no sprinklers. And the fire burned so hot that it fried the building's electrical grid, stalling the elevators.

As firefighters lugged hoses up dozens of flights of stairs, through darkness and smoke, into flames that burned deep orange and bright blue, the fire raged out of control.

In the chaos, Capt. David Holcombe, 52, firefighter Phyllis McAllister, 43, and firefighter James Chappell 29, sent out a call over the radio. They were lost, somewhere on the upper floors of the building. They wanted permission to break a window to get some air.

It was the last any of the firefighters below heard from them.

 

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There are very few homes right on the lake, but a woman who lives across the lake heard the man calling for help. With binoculars, she could see his equipment.  Patten happened to be just one mile away at Hoffmaster State Park, he said. "I could not get right to him because the ice was like a sponge."

Patten called in the man's location and members of the Norton Shores Fire Department wearing ice rescue equipment reached the man.

There was "actually open water on some parts of the lake," said Joseph Kinnucan, Norton Shores Fire Department Deputy Chief.

"He was getting to the point he could not grasp but he got my throw rope around him," said Patten.

"He was not able to utilize his muscle function," said Lt. Benjamin Chartier of the Norton Shores Fire Department, who added that the man used an ice fishing spud to keep from going completely under the water. "Sitting across the ice and he was holding on to that to help support him."

Howard Peiffer, the former Palm Coast fire chief, in 1975 witnessed the engine being built when he worked as a firefighter for the Lake Mohegan Fire Department. He worked there 25 years and retired in 1992, he said.

"It was a big difference from the one that it replaced because it was more powerful and it got around a lot easier," he told the News-Journal in earlier interviews. "It maneuvers very well. It's always had a good pump on it — a 1,000-gallon per minute pump."

Palm Coast Fire Chief Mike Beadle and Peiffer have said the engine would be used mostly for ceremonies.

Peiffer has a long history with the engine, he wrote in an email.