Girton Manufacturing Co. fire 1987

 

Girton Manufacturing Co. fire 1987

 

During the early morning, just after midnight, Tuesday, September 29th,1987, a fire was discovered in the middle of the center section of the Girton Manufacturing Co.  manufacturing building on Third Street in Millville, PA. It had progressed a short way along the roof and had broken through showing flames that caused a call to the local fire company. They reported and called for help from sister companies. Before the event was over, more than 25 pieces of equipment from seven fire companies were on the scene.

At first, the fire moved slowly into the high roof of that section of the building but soon the lower roof line of the two adjacent sections was involved. As it broke through those roofs it spread rapidly. The heat became so intense that the pieces of material afire were carried high into the air and as the low breeze moved east toward the residential end of the town it fell on the homes and grounds there. Fire equipment was dispatched uptown to prevent a spread there.

Many pressurized containers of oxygen and acetylene were heated to the point that the valves on them were blown off. Many exploded with loud reports, and some became projectiles that wormed or shot their way through the inferno. The flames consumed the eastern, older sections faster. The wooden trusses and deck had been covered with forty-plus years of tar as regular maintenance. Inches deep, it burns with heat more intense than the supporting wood.

Because of the newer construction and the direction of the wind that was drifting easterly toward town, the west end section was attacked by the fire last. But it received a lot of attention from the assembled fire personnel. Pictures taken during and after the fire show that the western corner of the structure remained standing minus the roof. Block walls stood at random around the perimeter.

By early light, the fire company volunteers and much of the town could see that little had been spared. The brick structure at the mill pond side in the middle was standing. It had been built at the time the first building was erected by Jordan and Lavine as a silk-throwing operation. The original building was an “L” shape for the main building with a boiler room attached on the mill side. It included a boiler and a steam engine that drove a drive shaft extending through the wall into the main area to power the overhead shafts. The shafts and pullys were used to provide motion to the variety of equipment used in the throwing of silk.

 It also powered a generator for electricity. This was not only used in the plant but was extended by wires into the community. This was the first electric power in town. Interestingly, this industry was the first in the community with electricity. A large steam boiler provided power to an engine, which ran a drive shaft, located down the center of the main building. A belt from the shaft returned to the engine room and ran the first electric generator in town. This unit provided lights for the building and electricity was also distributed to some sections of the community by the Millville Electric Light Company from here.

This boiler room also survived. It housed two newer  large coal-fired, low-pressure steam boilers for heating throughout the plant. A 100 HP high-pressure boiler for testing equipment and two electric driven, open-drive, medium pressure, air compressors. The roof had been badly damaged, and the equipment was in a variety of conditions. None were eventually salvaged.

At the northwest end, the two-story front of the bay stood. The roof was gone. The flooring of the second floor was gone but a few of the files and office equipment from that floor had fallen into the ashes below. Most of the contents of these were in cinders or lumps of metal. Here were stored nearly all of the records of the company. The engineering department had been housed on this floor as were the sales and accounting departments. A small wooden shed at the pond side, where the company watchman resided, was destroyed also.

When the insurance adjusters were finished and the state fire marshal had left, the remains were scavenged for at least some small bits to resurrect the company. The petty cash box survived with some small change, (the bills were incinerated), a complete list of all the creditors, gut no list of those that owed funds, and little else.

 

                The Manufacturing Company had recently consolidated all its business offices in the main manufacturing building. The former offices that had been shared with sister company Girton Sales Co across the mill race had housed both companies’ phone systems. The phone lines that had been run across the race to the plant were now routed into the small conference room in the former office building. By Wednesday morning the management had crammed into this room and was working the phones that were now active there.

                Several tasks were critical. The most pressing was to find a temporary manufacturing facility that was available, close enough for employees to travel from their homes, and with at least some sheet metal working equipment. A board of directors previously had served the company. One of the members of that board was the president of a manufacturing business, Metso, in Danville. They were in the process of changing a product line that had manufactured storage bins for industrial waste. The press brake, shears, welders, and other requirements for a similar process were there. This connection allow the Girton to work in that facility. A few of the employees settled in the next week.

                Orders that had been promised and the materials to produce them had all been lost. The engineering that was critical for the fabrication of each item had burnt. But, from memory, one small ice builder was completed as soon as the material needed was rerouted to Danville. This raised the spirits.  Former customers were ask to send any and all information.  Construction drawings began arriving from customers around the world.

                Eli Lilly, the Indiana drug company, was planning to introduce a new drug. The production line was nearly completed but needed a large washer to do the sanitation of the items used in the manufacture. The washer was a week away from delivery in the old plant. Eli  Lilly sent two engineers to live in the area for weeks to help Danville add to the equipment needed to do stainless production and to source raw materials. Other customers sprang to the task and assisted.

                A second priority became obvious almost immediately. Office space. A relationship with the local Millville Mutual Insurance company provided a space on the second floor of their building. It had been built for the expansion of their workforce and was still mostly available. Phone lines were rerouted there, and the full office staff was back at work there in days. This housed the engineering department and management. Many of these Millville sited employees  spent hours on the road between Danville and Millville.

                Now for a permanent home. The insurance company hired a contractor to clear the site. Salvage of equipment was minimal. This has finished before the snow that December of 1987. Bloom Penn in Bloomsburg, a design-build firm was hired to construct a 50,00 square foot factory on the original location. The area was raised by three feet for the base to move it above the 100-year flood plane of the adjacent Little Fishing Creek. The new plant has a manufacturing floor of 45,000 square feet and a two-story office. It was equipped with several new pieces, a few that were older pieces from a storage building that did not burn and most of the equipment that they were using at Danville. The Danville firm was disposing of the equipment that Girton was using, in a public sale six months after they had moved into the Danville construction. Girton purchased the essential pieces they were using at the sale and then moved them to Millville to the new plant when it was available.

                The floor layout was broken into four bays, every 25 feet in width. In the easternmost bay were hung two twenty-ton traveling bridges with two five-ton hoists. The second bay also had the same bridge arrangement but with 10-ton hoists. The third was for lighter production and had two five-ton cranes. The fourth was filled, in part, with the restrooms on the first floor, and over these were plant offices. A stockroom fitted in at the south end. The south end wall had a large drive-in door at the second bay to allow shipping of the products and receiving large raw materials. The fourth had a dock level overhead and a walk-in door.

                To the southwest corner of the manufacturing building, an office was located. It is a two-story mostly open office configuration. A management office and conference room are at the south end of the first floor. Two offices, a training room for 25, and a customer lounge are at the south end of the second floor with the remainder for future office expansion and record storage. In the center of the first floor, a fireproof room was constructed to house all the important company records as a result of lessons learned.

                Construction was completed in the early winter of 1988. Over the Christmas and New Year’s weekends, the equipment that had accumulated in Danville was moved to the new plant. An effort had been made to ship all the production at the Danville location before the move, but a few items needed completion and were shipped from Danville in January.  The offices moved with a lot less stress. Details like transferring the phone connections and changing the mail address were easy. Moving the new press brake took more muscle and other major pieces caused the same challenges.

                The fire destroyed all the design information and historical records of the installed equipment base. Thus, a decision was made to build the remaining business on the original founder’s product: cleaning equipment. The employees had an amazing recall for most of the components used in the current items. Customers had a variety of helpful drawings, repair part lists, specs, etc. They shared these to build back a knowledge base. It was decided to continue the production of the ice builders as a few employees could reconstruct most of the design. A contract with an English firm that had a license to make this line in England had the prints that had been provided under the license and shared copies of most of those necessary.

                The old plant floor housed old lathes, small press brakes, jump presses and tons of tools and dies. This had all been hauled off to the scrap dealer for salvage. They had been retained over the years because they would produce an item or two for the manufacturer of a replacement part for an old tank filler or washer. With the loss of the information and the equipment to make it, the spare parts business for the previous base was gone. When they moved in the employees found a new shear, new press brake and a variety of smaller pieces of equipment that would be needed to increase the production to fill existing orders and a renewed interest by customers in cleaning equipment.