1962: Fire nearly destroys downtown Niles

By JOE GORMAN / Tribune Chronicle
NILES — It seemed like there was a calamity just about every day during March 1962, and Niles was no exception.

If there weren’t airplanes crashing or blowing up or coups in Latin America, there were blizzards and floods that killed and displaced.

Locally, being on the roads was not a safe proposition, as there were several fatal accidents including the death of two 13-year-olds in Warren who were killed while riding a bicycle.

It was also the month downtown Niles almost burned down after the H.H. Hoffman Department Store was destroyed by fire on March 23, 1962.

The fire at the store caused $300,000 damage, and led to the razing of two nearby businesses because of smoke and water damage. At one time, it threatened the whole block between Park Avenue and State Street.

It also took the life of 67-year-old Axel Aulin of Lafayette Street, a Youngstown school teacher, who died of smoke inhalation after she was trapped on the second floor of the store when the flames broke out about about 2:45 p.m. It took firefighters two hours to retrieve her body because of the smoke and flames.

Former firefighter Paul Hogan, who had been on the department for just four months, was Aulin’s neighbor and borrowed her car to go to work that day. He said he was scheduled to work afternoon turn and was coming to work just as the fire broke out. He had no idea of what was going on as he was getting ready to go to work, Hogan said.

Hogan’s sister called him and ‘‘she said to look out the window and see the smoke.’’

At one point, according to newspaper accounts, officials feared the entire block may succumb to the fire. Firefighters from McDonald, Liberty, Howland, Girard, McKinley Heights and Mineral Ridge were called to help out. Mayor Edward Lenney credited the firefighters for their work in saving the block.

‘‘We thought the whole downtown was going to go,’’ Hogan said.

Two other businesses, Ragazzo’s Men’s Wear and Pritchard’s, were heavily damaged and eventually had to be demolished.

Newspaper accounts also said a Warren man who was a witness, V.E. Fickes, saw four women in the second-floor windows of the Hoffman store, grabbed a ladder from a passing fire truck and ‘‘scrambled up like a jackrabbit’’ to rescue one of the women. Fickes later told reporters ‘‘I am a daredevil’’ when he was asked what experience he had in dangerous situations.

Hogan said he had been a firefighter in the Navy, so he was used to large fires. He said he was laying hose and also worked in the aerial during the fire, and he said the heat of the flames combined with the unseasonably warm weather — it was 75 degrees — made things uncomfortable, Hogan said.

The bicentennial history of Niles said that the fire was the beginning of the decline of the downtown area for retail establishments.

jgorman@tribtoday.com