Sirens blaring and lights flashing, the truck sped along the thoroughfares of Everett at 60-plus miles per hour, barreling through a string of stoplights on its way to a fiery 2 a.m. truck explosion.
But the driver was no EMT or paramedic. It was Paul Boudreau, an electronics salesman from Peabody.
Boudreau is a sparky, part of an age-old fraternity of fire chasers, someone who has been to more than 300 fires in a mere two-year stretch and possibly thousands in his lifetime. When news of a fire breaks, day or night, he and other sparkies rush to the scene - often together from their clubhouse in downtown Boston - just for the thrill of it.
Boston Sparks Association members gather on Friday nights at their headquarters, a defunct fire station on Congress Street that is also home to the city's little-known, seldom-visited fire museum. These days, though, there is more waiting than rushing. Improved building codes requiring smoke detectors and sprinklers in most structures have reduced fires to about half what they were three decades ago.
So huddled at a folding table amid antique scanners and framed photographs of fires, as a Sept. 11, 2001, rescue video plays in the background on an old VCR, they hope against hope for a fire. Just 10 years ago, they were virtually guaranteed at least one a night. Now, they're mostly relegated to reliving the glory days.
The Lynn fire of '81. ("Big," someone said.) The Chelsea fire in '83. ("Now that was a conflagration.")
"The Danvers explosion?" Boudreau said with a scoff. "I beat the [Danvers] chief in there."
Boudreau, who is president of the association, wore a blue sweatshirt emblazoned with the Boston Sparks Associa tion seal. The sparks association operates a "canteen" - an old ambulance that members take shifts driving to fires. Stocked with water, coffee, and snacks, it's parked on the first floor of the clubhouse in an old fire engine bay. Because it has blue state emergency vehicle license plates, several sparkies have taken emergency driving courses to operate it.
Friday night regular Paul Davies, a retired police officer, blew cigar smoke rings and recalled driving his new police cruiser to a fire years ago, only to return to it and find it covered with hot ash. He paid to get it specially detailed, but he never reconsidered his hobby. He got hooked as a boy, visiting firefighters in Brighton.
"The diehard members have been doing it for years," he said.
Davies and Boudreau will drive to New York to watch fires several times a year. Boudreau has been to so many, he knew 22 firefighters who died in the terrorist attacks and was given an honorary battalion chief badge by the department. And if Davies visits an out-of-state fire without Boudreau, he sends him a taunting postcard.
The two men trade facts and statistics about fires and firefighters like old sports fans, wistful for the era when crowds of sparkies drove from fire to fire, visiting as many as five in a night. Men the stature of Arthur Fiedler, who died in 1984, and philanthropist David Mugar would drive around the city until 4 a.m., drinking coffee and listening for fires on a scanner.
"It's not the way it used to be in the old days, riding around all night," Boudreau said. "It was a social event."
The Boston Sparks Association and the Box 52 Association (named to commemorate a city blaze dating to 1871) no longer have multiyear waiting lists for membership. And the group's ambulance is increasingly used in funeral processions for aging sparkies who have died.
Back at the clubhouse, members refuse to hang up their helmets just yet. They sat together until after midnight drinking Diet 7UP - not beer - in case a call came in.
"I even took a cab [to a fire] one time," Boudreau confided with some glee.
Boston has had its share of notable sparkies over the years, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the former Supreme Court justice.
Holmes biographer Albert Alschuler, a University of Chicago Law School professor, said Holmes had his family execute a fire drill once a month.
"Whenever the fire bells rang, he went out," Alschuler said in an interview recently.
Harvard psychology professor William Pollack said there are a spectrum of reasons people follow fires, from enjoyment of the pure excitement to the perverse enjoyment of negative events.
"Anthropologists tell us fire has great meaning to nonindustrialized peoples and we see it doesn't go away in industrialized nations," said Pollack, who wrote the bestseller "Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood."
Like firefighters, most sparkies are men. The Boston Sparks Association has had one female member in its 70-year history.
Sparks organizations model their structure after fire departments, creating their own radio channels with sparky dispatchers. Members often wear authentic firefighter jackets and gear to a blaze and drive dark-hued Crown Victorias like those driven by police and fire officials.
For decades, sparkies' cars filled the parking lots of the Howard Johnson's on South Hampton Street and the Dough Boy coffee shop at Eddie Everett Square. Elliot Belin, the 72-year-old godfather of sparking in Boston and a member of the defunct group, The Tappers, called the mood festive.
"Usually everybody is rhapsodizing about a new ladder truck. 'Ooh, you got pictures?'," he said, describing a typical conversation. "You don't show baby pictures, you show pictures of the new aerial ladder."
Mugar, the wealthy philanthropist who teamed up with Fiedler for sparky outings, recalled his most memorable fire, a blaze that destroyed the Hotel Vendome on June 17, 1972. Nine firefighters and one woman died. Mugar said he went to Symphony Hall to tell Fiedler what was happening. Fiedler was in the middle of a performance, but changed the program to lead the symphony in a requiem.
"He played this beautiful piece of music and then he and I went down to the scene," Mugar said. "It was very moving."
Pollack said problems arise when the hobby becomes "some strange thrill that lurks inside."
In 1985, seven Boston sparkies - including a former police officer, firefighter, and Boston Housing Authority officer - went to jail for setting fires, including one that burned the state fire academy to the ground. The men allegedly set the fires, causing an estimated $25 million in damage, hoping that the department would stop laying-off firefighters.
State Fire Marshal Steven Coan, then-director of the fire academy, said he thinks most sparkies today are interested in firefighting strategy and equipment. He knows many sparkies personally and listens to their radio frequencies to get updated information on fires.
Most sparkies acknowledge that fire often translates into tragedy. Boudreau said he and fellow sparkies are there to help and bask in the glory of the art of firefighting, not the misery of others.
"Sometimes they think we're a bunch of morbid people," Boudreau said of those who are skeptical of the hobby. "It makes me upset."
Boudreau hadn't been to a fire in weeks when news of an explosion in Everett erupted on his scanner. He has two in his bedroom, behind the headboard of his bed.
"I gotta go, I gotta go," his wife, Nancy, recalled him saying. Married 29 years, she knew the drill.
Boudreau drove from his home in Peabody to the Boston clubhouse to get the canteen truck and drive it to the fire. For the next five hours, in the bone-chilling cold, he and other sparkies on the scene would deliver water to firefighters. They would also get an eyeful.
Firefighters sprayed a canopy of water onto stubborn flames as they leaped from apartment buildings. The fire, encouraged by 9,400 gallons of gasoline from an overturned tanker, consumed two apartment buildings, caused numerous cars to explode, and destroyed the belongings of dozens of people. Thick, pungent smoke filled the air.
It was sparky heaven.
