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Right place, right time: Off-duty fire chief helped evacuate DeLuca's

E-mail|Link|Comments () July 12, 2010 11:47 AM

Mark Ashworth

Michelle Ashworth posed for the camera in what is probably the last picture taken in DeLuca's Market before the fire that caused $1 million in damage. Minutes later, the fire broke out in the basement.

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

A small-town fire chief from Ohio says it was a "wild experience" to find himself in the landmark DeLuca's Market on Beacon Hill last week when a four-alarm fire broke out in the building's basement.

"I'm used to going to these things, not being there when they start," said Mark Ashworth, assistant fire chief in Clayton, Ohio, who was credited by store employees with ensuring the store was safely evacuated in last Thursday's fire.

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"That was a surreal feeling. I've never had that experience in my life. I felt very out of place. I wish I had a hose line at that time."

Ashworth, who is originally from Providence, visits New England at least once a year and was showing his 18-year-old daughter, Michelle, the Beacon Hill area. They stopped into DeLuca's, where Ashworth took a picture of his daughter -- likely the last picture to be taken in the store before the fire.

They were about to check out when a young man came from the basement and asked for a fire extinguisher and then went back down, Ashworth said.

When the young man came back up, there was a whiff of smoke or fire extinguisher discharge coming up the stairs, Ashworth said. He could also hear electrical arcing.

Ashworth identified himself as a firefighter and asked if there was anything he could do.

He said he then went down and looked up in the front and saw that there had been some arcing and the floor joists above were on fire.

"It was pretty simple to identify. It was going to be a bad fire and we needed to get people out," he said.

He said he made sure a young woman with a fire extinguisher got out of the basement, closed the door to the basement so the fire wouldn't spread, told the manager to call the fire department, and then, with the help of employees and his daughter, made sure everyone was out of the store and no one walked in. He and a manager also rang doorbells and banged on the street-level door to alert the upstairs tenants.

The fire department arrived within minutes, Ashworth said.

"I didn't stay very long. I wanted to get out of the way once the fire department got there. Any firefighter will tell you the public has a tendency to get in the way," he said. "My daughter and I just stepped back down the street."

"The Boston Fire Department's got to be one of the best in the nation. They did not joke around. They went right to work," he said.

"They were impressive," said Ashworth, a 23-year veteran who works in a bedroom community of 11,000 people, where the department has 30 firefighters, most of the fires are residential, and the tallest building is three stories.

Ashworth shrugged off the suggestion that it was a lucky thing he happened to be stopping by the venerable Beacon Hill landmark, which had been in operation since 1905.

"I commend the employees. They did a great job of making everybody get out of the store," he said.