by Geoff Fox
In the early morning hours of Sunday, August 25, 1974, the Washington House Hotel, located at the corner of Washington Street and Fairfax Street, caught fire and burned, killing 12 people and destroying a block of businesses in downtown Berkeley Springs.
Locally, The Morgan Messenger, Morning Herald (now Herald-Mail) in Hagerstown, and Martinsburg Journal covered the fire and its aftermath.
There would also be national coverage in many newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Washington Post, and many others, including national and world television reports.
According to The Morgan Messenger, Dwan McBee arrived with his camera in hand and told the paper later, “The sight is awesome, appalling – the central core of the Washington House Hotel already a mass of flames and two fire companies – Berkeley Springs and Hancock – fighting bravely, but losing ground to the raging, spreading inferno.”
Around 3 a.m. that morning, town policeman Lee Fox was making the last of his patrol of the night when he noticed smoke coming from the Washington Hotel.
Fox, who was also a volunteer fireman, stopped a passing driver and instructed him to go to the hotel and warn the inhabitants. He then went to the Fire Department building and turned on the siren.
In spite of Lee Fox’s quick action and the response by area fire companies, by 5:20 a.m., fire had completely gutted the building and spread to adjoining stores on Washington and Fairfax streets.
The hotel fire remains one of the deadliest fires in West Virginia history.
Now, 50 years later, not many of the people who fought that historic and tragic fire are still around.
But there are a few still with us who faced that tragedy and remember, and family members of the firefighters who showed up in hopes of saving the center of town. 
Bill Fox and Danny Clark were among those fighting the fire that day. Both men still live in Berkeley Springs.
Clark said he wasn’t exactly sure what time he got the call, but he and his family had just returned from Washington D.C. and he jumped in the car to head to the fire.
“You didn’t have to worry where it was at because the heat was so bad you had to drive on the opposite side of the road,” he said.
Within five or 10 minutes, Clark was on the scene. When he arrived on scene and saw the fire, he remembers thinking, “What the hell we going to do now?”
At the time Fox was living just outside of town and moving around as he would any other fire call. That was until his grandfather, Hiram Fox, called.
Since he lived in town, Hiram would call Bill and tell him the fire siren was going off.
“He was a little bit different this time,” Bill Fox said. “He calls and said, ‘Town’s on fire’.”
Fox said he jumped in his old Pinto and as he rounded the curve, he saw that his grandfather was right. It looked like the whole town was on fire.
Fox said he parked the car and went to the scene.
At that time, the hose lines were just getting put out and Fox, and two others whom he couldn’t remember, grabbed the line and said, “Follow me.”
The first responding engine, Engine 4, had broken down.
Fox said, in his opinion, that engine breaking down ended up saving lives during the fire.
When the engine pulled up, the driveshaft was twisted, rendering it inoperative. The engine malfunction slowed down their movements.
Fox said had there been firefighters there at that moment, they would have entered the hotel when the fire wasn’t as intense and probably have been trapped as the fire raged.
“They would have been suckered in,” he said.
Fox’s line was coming straight off the hydrant and looking inside through the lobby, he could see the fire had started in the elevator shaft.
“In those days, it wasn’t so much as it is today where protocol is the ultimate thing. In those days, you just simply fought the damn fire,” he said.
By the time firefighters crossed the lobby, the elevator shaft was blue, meaning it was around 575 degrees.
He said as they attacked the fire there, firefighters knew they weren’t getting anywhere and backed out of the building, trying a different approach.
Fox said they decided to attack the fire from the adjoining coffee shop and try to get at the fire in the elevator from above.
Using a two and half inch line, and flowing a lot of water, Fox said firefighters were throwing the water 40 or 50 feet, but the water was only reaching 30 or 35 feet.
“It was so intense that the water was evaporating before it got there,” Fox said.
They again backed out of that location after realizing that location was not safe and tried a different route, this time from what used to be Clark’s.
The ladder from Engine 4, one Fox said was a difficult ladder to work, was there and State Trooper Ron See took Fox’s instruction on how to work the ladder.
“It was so bad, we were getting ready to jump,” he said.
Fox said the strategy changed from attacking the fire to throwing water at the fire from the street.
Danny Clark said he drove a tanker to the scene and he and Kenny Tritapoe took a line and were working inside the hotel. Because of the intensity of the heat, Clark’s team backed out of the hotel as well.
“I ran out of water ‘cause it only held 1,500 gallons,” he said. “That didn’t last long at all.”
As they were fighting the fire, Clark said other firefighters from around the area started arriving from Hancock, Winchester, Hagerstown, and Martinsburg.
Once they started getting set up and fighting the fire, Clark said things started improving a little, “but not a whole lot.”
“It was too far gone by the time they all got there and got set up,” he said. “A lot of water was spread there.”
Clark wasn’t sure if they had air packs back in 1974, but he knows he didn’t have one on that day. All he had on while fighting the fire was a pair of shorts and sneakers.
When they were finally able to go back to the fire hall and get their gear, they were putting on a black rubber coat, metal helmet, and ¾ boots.
“Not everybody even got to wear them and if you did get a pair of boots, they were made four sizes bigger than what you were supposed to wear,” Clark said.
Those experiences during the Hotel Washington Fire taught the firefighters at the time a lot of things. For the younger generation, the massive blaze is something Clark and Fox hope doesn’t happen again.
“These younger guys, I don’t think they’ve ever seen anything like that,” Clark said about the hotel fire.
“And I hope they don’t,” Fox added.
Fox said there were so many things that happened and were done that in today’s view would have been said were done incorrectly. But 50 years ago on the scene, it was a different story.
By the time the first elements of actual firefighting began, Fox said the hotel was already gone.
At the time, the Hotel Washington was already over 100 years old.
After his initial response, Fox was located at the square in Berkeley Springs, and his father, George Fox, Sr., had Engine 3 on West Fairfax Street and “babied that truck for three days.”
Bill Fox said his father pushed the engine, running it so hard that George had to change the oil.
The way Bill Fox had the line from the engine set up, it required a couple others to help him, but his father told him another way to run the hose, which allowed Fox to run the hose by himself.
There were firewalls in the hotel, which for a while served their purpose, including one near the chimney.
Because of the intensity of the heat, one of the firewalls gave way and a big chimney collapsed. There had been firefighters in that area previously.
However, they had already vacated the area and were in the memorial plaza in the middle of Fairfax Street. People not knowing where anyone was, Fox said that collapse got the attention of a lot of people.
“We didn’t have radios and all like they got today,” Clark said. “It was all somebody go up and tell them what to do or run back or… that’s how we had to operate because we didn’t have the sources they got today.”
Clark said if they had today’s equipment and tools, things might have gone a little better, but “I doubt it,” he said.
Fox said the strange thing of the fire was that it was in the center of the building. Clark added that the elevator shaft acted as a chimney on a house.
By the time the fire was completely out, Fox said about 20 hours had passed.
Clark said even once the fire was out, it had to sit for a day before they could start the salvage and recovery process.
“It was too damn hot to do anything,” Clark said, adding the bricks that had once been the building’s structure held the heat as they sat in piles of rubble.
Clark said he remembers sleeping on the memorial island for two days before they did anything.
When the firefighters finally got the fire knocked down where they could some headway on it, personnel were moved in and out to allow for breaks.
Fox said the Berkeley Springs firefighters were only taking small breaks because it was the middle of their town. They just kept spending time at the scene taking care of things.
There were some “comical” things that happened while at the fire, Fox said.
He spoke of a person who came over and pointed out that steam was coming off the courthouse on Fairfax Street and Kesecker Realty across Washington Street.
So Fox, being stationed in the square, turned his hose on the courthouse and Kesecker Realty. Of course, there were a lot of spectators at the scene.
“When I turned around to Kesecker Realty, a lot of people said all they needed was a bar of soap for a really good shower,” Fox said with a laugh.
Had there been a slight breeze the night of the fire, Fox said it’s unknown how much of Berkeley Springs would have gone up in flames.
At one point, Fox said he looked up and the steam and smoke were going straight up, which he said was a “lucky operation.”
By the time the fire had spread to the other businesses in the building, Fox said the heat and fire weren’t as intense.
Fox recalled there was a fire company from Winchester responding to the blaze with one of the engineers on the engine familiar with the hotel. The call was anticipated, so they were ready to respond.
Clark said it took the fire company about 25 minutes to respond from Winchester. At the time, U.S. 522 between Berkeley Springs and Winchester was a two-lane road.
“When them boys pulled in down there, I don’t know if they were riding on the back or they were behind the cab, but they jumped off of it, run over in the park and sat down on a bench and said, ‘We’re not going back with that crazy son of a bitch!’,” Clark recalled.
Fox remembered another firefighter from Winchester who had pulled up and asked for his assignment. While he can’t remember who it was who gave the order, the firefighter was told to draft water from one of the springs in the back portion of Berkeley Springs State Park.
“He said, ‘Hell there’s not enough to prime the pump!’ Six hours later, they went back to check on him, the spring had gone down three inches,” Fox said. “And he was pumping full throttle.”
Clark said the engine had ended up pumping from the spring for three days and the firefighter couldn’t believe it, plus all the firefighters were pulling off the hydrants as well, which were fed from that spring.
“We didn’t hurt anything,” he said.
During the entire fire, engines were placed on Washington Street and both sides of Fairfax Street. Traffic was rerouted onto Mercer Street and Green Street.
Fox said the number 26 comes to mind for the number of fire apparatus used to battle the fire. Clark said that number was close.
T.H. Compton, Clark said, also used his tankers to help haul water as well.
Recovery and aftermath
It was on the third day when firefighters started finding the bodies of those who had not been able to escape from the hotel during the fire.
“I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, but nothing was as hard as going in — there were 13 victims there — and going in and locating them and removing what was left,” Fox said.
After 50 years, he said he can still see and smell, “emphasis on smell,” those remains.
Fox said he couldn’t describe the smell from that day looking for bodies and likened the situation to war.
Fox, who is a Vietnam veteran, said you could describe everything except that smell.
“Once you smelled one, you’ve got it for life,” Clark said. “After that, we had house fires and all. You could tell if there was a body in there when you walked in there. It’s a smell you just don’t forget.”
Clark said going in and looking for the victims was “hit and miss.”
“You just had to look around,” he said. Clark added there were a couple of fire marshals on scene looking for bodies as well.
While looking for the victims, Fox said they were using little brushes. Once they had an idea where the body was, they had to use the brush to dust away the ash so not to damage the corpse anymore than need be.
When the body was found, they were transported to the county jail, which had been turned into a morgue.
Some of the first victims found were a black family that had just checked into the hotel on the night of August 25.
“I won’t tell you how we found them, but that was the first ones we found,” Clark said.
Fox said the family was in the hallway but the smoke had overtaken them.
The victims were spread throughout the hotel, including a young woman who was Clark’s cousin. Fox said a disc jockey from the WCST was in the front of the building.
Clark said there was a picture Dwan McBee had taken where it looks like a person standing in the window in the area where the body was found.
One of the items lost in the fire was the sign-in book that would have told where the people were located.
“It was all right there on the counter,” Clark said. “If you had hindsight, looking ahead, you could grab the book and money and got out of there, then at least you’d know who was registered in there.”
Finding the bodies also affected firefighters when they took their breaks.
Clark said the ladies’ auxiliary of the local fire companies were busy in the firehouse kitchen preparing a meal, not knowing what the firefighters were going through at the fire scene. The ladies had cooked roast beef.
“They did a fantastic job getting the food fixed, but after going in and looking for bodies and all, unless you know what a body looks like burnt, just look at a piece of roast beef,” Clark said. “They set that down on the table, that roast beef, and that’s all she wrote for me.”
Both Clark and Fox said they got up from the table and weren’t hungry anymore.
It was “quite a while” before Clark said he could eat roast beef or hot dogs after the fire.
Clark praised the work of the ladies who did “a fantastic job that day” preparing food for the firefighters.
In the days after the fire, Berkeley Springs Volunteer Fire Company had to take inventory on what equipment they had and needed.
Clark said someone started a monetary fund to help replace some of the stuff the fire department needed.
He said it was about half a year taking inventory.
Fox added it wasn’t just Berkeley Springs gear that needed replaced, but also those other fire companies that responded as Berkeley Springs was replacing theirs as well.
There was enough money raised, Clark said, that they could afford to get new air masks on all equipment, bunker gear, and hose.
There was a board set up where firefighters had to give them a list of what was needed and the board would have to approve. If it wasn’t approved, the fire department didn’t get it.
“We had an awful time sometimes trying to show them what we needed,” Clark said. “It got done and we came out pretty good.”
When the notice was put out about the fire department needing things, Fox said the public opened their pocketbooks to help.
Fox said the fire department loss was $206,000 in 1974 money. Today, it would have been $1.294 million.
Clark hadn’t heard what the total value of loss was for the hotel and the businesses lost that day.
One business was a restaurant owned by the Dawson family. Inside the restaurant’s freezer was a surprise found a few days after the fire.
“We popped the freezer, and that stuff was still frozen solid after all that intense heat,” Clark said. “That’s how good that freezer was.”
Of those who were at the scene or active in the fire department at the time of the fire, Clark and Fox said only seven are still alive – themselves, Roy Hovermale, Eddie Fox, Jimmy Breeden, Danny Duckwall and Ronnie O’Brien. Ronald VanGosen was Fire Chief at the time of the hotel fire. VanGosen recently passed away on July 30.
“I just can’t believe it’s been 50 years,” Clark said.
