onlynDetroit piquette fire



		Back in June of 2005 I witnessed one of the most devastating fires this city has ever seen. The Piquette Market Warehouse, known in the past as the Studebaker Plant and the Wayne Automotive Company, was in its post centennial years at the time of the fire. Housing only four remaining business on the east end, the opposite side of the building was made entirely of brick and wood, but mostly wood. Lost were all signs of its former glory days when it helped Motor City become the car capital of the world. Left vacant to rot and decay from the mid-70s on, the once magnificent auto plant was merely a wooden tinderbox of epic proportions.

In early June of 2005 I was living in the Milwaukee Junction area. It was around 10 P.M. on a hot Monday night when it all began. The smell of smoke was nothing new; my apartment building had been the target of two fire bombings by former disgruntled tenants that year. I took a quick walk around the premises. I noticed nothing out of the ordinary. I returned to my 3rd floor loft and turned on the T.V. Every major local news channel was covering an out of control fire, reportedly on the west side of town. I sat and watched for a minute, and then decided to open a window to get some cool airflow going. Instead of a cool breeze, I got a big whiff of noxious smoke. Beyond the giant warehouse next to me I could see a huge inferno roaring. My apartment, which is on the east side, was so close to the fire I had a better view of it than Fox 2 news.

Without hesitation I grabbed my video camera and was out the door. I didn’t even need to drive. I was within walking distance of the largest single fire New Center had ever seen. I met up with some friends from my apartment building. At first I admit I was a little worried, that was until the kegs of beer started to arrive. Now I have been to more than a few fires in the city at this point, but this had to be the first one with alcohol service. Our panic turned to curiosity, and then to excitement. As we drank and talked, the crowd started to grow larger and larger, and by midnight the whole block was full of onlookers, delinquents, photographers, and the just plain old curious types.

		I meet up with a couple friends from the burbs; growing tired of trying to look over people, they convinced me to take them to the top of Fisher Body 21. Another massive abandoned hunk of industrial might, discarded and left to deteriorate under its own enormous weight. With video rolling, we entered the disheveled entryway of FB21. Carefully sidestepping large holes in the floor that run the entire length of the plant, we made it to the darkened stairway. The 8-floor climb to the roof was made even more exhilarating by the sounds of sirens and light from the police cars outside on Piquette Street. Slowly emerging from the water tower on the roof we gazed upon the biggest inferno any of us had ever seen. The entire block was engulfed by this time. A warehouse where Henry Ford built the first production model T’s was close to becoming another fiery blaze. At the time of the fire, that warehouse contained 14 of the rarest automobiles in the world. If not for the amazing efforts of the Detroit Fire Department, that building too would have been lost, and thus most of the industrial warehousing district between Woodward and I-75. Possibly even my own home would have been lost. Apparently while on the rooftop we had attracted the attention of a police helicopter. Likely with the use of heat signature cameras, they picked us out on top of the cold desolate building. In an instant we were under what seemed like a scorching million-watt spotlight. Over a megaphone we could barely make out a voice instructing us to come out with hands up. Quickly we hurried inside the base of the water tower. Knowing the police would not come to get us, we waited.

Out of sight we simply waited until the helicopter was gone before making our way back down. As the fire continued we walked back to the scene of this now roaring crowd. With an atmosphere much like a rock concert, onlookers were on top of cars, busses and shoulders, all trying to get a better view of the carnage. We proceeded to drink, talk, laugh, and tell stories until 4 A.M. Firefighters tirelessly worked to control the blaze, but it almost got the better of one fireman. Standing at the corner of Beaubien and Piquette, he was trying to drag a hose across the front of the building when the whole corner started to crumble. The fireman jumped out of the way just as several hundred pounds of brick and flaming timber came crashing to the ground where just moments before he had been standing. The crowd gasped in horror and then let out a giant simultaneous cheer. That firefighter survived certain death in front of an audience.

We finished the night off with a trip to the roof of my apartment. The smoldering ruin of the auto facility glowed as we watched as smoky soot was set a loft into the sky, only to be re-deposited over the already dingy industrial corridor. For weeks after the fire, you could see scrapers hard at work, night and day, trying to extrude the remaining copper, aluminum, and sheet metals that was still intact on the site of the old plant. I myself ventured by one night for some photos of the now leveled ruins of the Studebaker Plant. I was not equipped at the time with a respirator mask and was overcome quite quickly by the noxious odor of burned animal carcasses from meat being stored inside at the time of the fire. At this current time the land is being leveled and graded for the newly announced veterans community-housing program. A development entirely devoted to taking care of Detroit’s poor veterans. A minority that desperately needs assistance to survive in these ever increasing hard times. Fires continue to ravage the city year in and year out, but occasionally one will have a positive outcome like this.