SPENCER — After fire destroyed the building that housed the county’s second-oldest continuously operating business, the stories were told — stories of the damage, the arson arrest and the family that is picking up the pieces to start over. But one story has been left untold, the story of seven fire departments that pulled together on a cold February night in an attempt to save a bit of Rowan history.

A team of more than 70 firefighters from Spencer, Salisbury, Ellis, Union, Millers Ferry, Franklin and Granite Quarry banded together on Feb. 19 to battle what officials are calling the county’s worst fire in a decade.

Stoudemire Furniture Store first opened its doors on Main Street in Salisbury in 1883. It moved to the two-story brick building at 310 S. Salisbury Ave. in Spencer in 1902. On Feb. 19, several lifetimes of work perished in one night.

Shortly before 7 p.m., someone — police have charged a 13-year-old boy with arson — set fire to the one-story warehouse located in the rear of the main building. The warehouse had just been filled with brand new furniture that was waiting to be unpacked, the most furniture the store had ever had at one time, according to owner Tom Gemayel.

For at least 10 minutes, nobody knew the fire had started. Being a cold evening, the initial wisps of smoke were unlikely to cause alarm. The warehouse was behind the main building, out of plain view. But stacked full of furniture, the metal structure acted as a furnace, building heat and pressure.

“That metal is like an oven,” County Fire Marshal Arthur Delaney said. “Everything we deal with in our everyday lives has an ignition temperature,” and at some point, the roof melted and an explosion followed. Suddenly, the fire was visible.

Minutes later a man ran into Escape the Daily Grind, the coffee shop two buildings away from Stoudemire, saying the furniture store was on fire. Hannah Clark, a coffee shop employee, called 911 and then went to check it out herself. “It had gone up so quick,” Clark said, describing how the mattresses inside the rear warehouse were blazing.

Jay Baker, engineer for the Salisbury Fire Department and lieutenant for the Spencer Fire Department, was on his way through Spencer to pick up his son, Thomas, from Scouts when he heard the initial call on the radio. Baker arrived on the scene and first made as much of a loop as he could around the building to assess the situation and then backed his pickup across the street to set up command. He would act at the incident commander for what would become a long evening.

Salisbury Assistant Chief Rick Fesperman came on the scene and acted as assistant incident commander, communicating with the 911 dispatchers about what units were coming and where to place them. Chris Lyerly from the county Fire Marshal’s office — who also works in the Salisbury department — would later come and act as a liaison, talking with the firefighters on the scene. Both fed information back to Baker. Later Capt. David Morris — who works with Salisbury and is the chief at Granite Quarry — would join the command center to help plot diagrams and assist with an attack plan.

When firefighters — Spencer being the first to respond — arrived, the warehouse was 75 to 100 percent involved. Spencer Capt. Tony Bean, one of three on the first truck, said the truck came up behind the store, hooking up to a fire hydrant on the corner of Third Street and South Salisbury Avenue. “I can’t even remember looking at the building for the first couple minutes,” Bean said because they were working quickly to get water on it. Soon Ellis firefighters joined the Spencer crew.

If the building had just one sprinkler, Delaney said, the firefighters would have had a better chance of containing the blaze. Since the building was built so long ago, sprinklers were not required in it.

At this point, firefighters realized they had lost the warehouse, but they still hoped to save the historic main building. But that quickly presented its own problems.

The warehouse is connected to the main building through a large glass window-door on the first floor. The main building is divided into three large sections separated by brick-and-wood walls running from Salisbury Avenue to the rear. In the initial attack, firefighters concentrated in the northern most section, where the rear portion is divided by a mezzanine. The door to the warehouse opens just under the floor of the mezzanine, and that’s where the fire entered.

A crew of Spencer and Salisbury firefighters met it at the door. Dragging two water lines in Stoudemire’s front door, the team fought to keep the fire from spreading into the main structure.

As the fire crept under the mezzanine of the building, firefighters fought the flames on the first floor, but it moved too quickly. Before they knew it the fire was rolling over their heads on the ceiling below the mezzanine. At this point, “it wasn’t for the faint-hearted,” Delaney said.

Bob Parnell, battalion chief for training with the Salisbury Fire Department, radioed inside but the team from Salisbury Engine 511 did not respond. The team of four — Capt. Rick Barkley, Jason Kluttz, Larry Craver and Lonnie Horne — didn’t communicate with the command center for a few moments. Parnell halted radio traffic so he could hear Engine 511 signal, and soon Barkley responded, accounting for all four team members.

Then, it happened again. Barkley could not find one of his firefighters. Baker cleared all fire ground channels again. Apparently the firefighter ventured beyond “vocal distance” and did not hear Barkley calling him. “You’re talking about a place that’s dark and smoke-filled,” Parnell said explaining how easy it was to get turned around in the building that night.

“This was probably one of the most tense moments,” Baker said, until the firefighter finally reappeared.

After what Delaney termed “an excellent coordinated attack,” firefighters extinguished the fire in the mezzanine and what was left of the warehouse. But by that time, the flames had crept up the open construction of the rear wall in the main building. Shooting across the open space between the ceiling and roof, soon the second floor was burning strongly.

A narrow staircase at the rear of the store provided the only access to the second floor, which is divided into three large rooms spanning the entire building.

Delaney, Parnell and four firefighters headed upstairs. At this point, Delaney said, they still believed they could save the building.

As the six reached the second floor, they waded through thick black smoke, stumbling over the furniture that filled the rooms. In the command center, Fesperman could sense the firefighters’ struggle through what he would later call “an obstacle course.”

Delaney said each time a flame would blaze up, the light allowed them to see better, but as they extinguished it, darkness fell again.

They knew there was fire in the walls and ceiling, but what they didn’t know — and would soon find out — was there was fire in a small storage room in the front of the store. In the confusion, they didn’t realize the room was even there.

Delaney and Parnell called for two lines, and the six split up, fighting the fire from two angles.

Meanwhile, a Salisbury ladder truck crew — of Rodney Misenheimer, David Deal and Barry Fraizer — opened a 4-by-4-foot hole in the roof with a power saw. Much of the smoke escaped through the opening, making it easier for the teams inside to see, but the end tables, night stands and assorted wood accessories made it hard to move around.

Usually, firefighters stay inside a burning building 20 to 30 minutes. On this February night, firefighters stayed within the building more than an hour. “We held it as long as we could,” Delaney said. “I truly felt in my heart we were going to control this thing.”

The firefighters assisting Delaney and Parnell rotated in and out in teams of two, but Delaney and Parnell stayed with it for the duration. “I just felt like we could get this thing,” Delaney said.

Outside the building, Baker informed the firefighters as time crept by. Because they knew the construction of the building was sound, they felt confident staying as long as they did. For a short period of time, Baker said, they thought they had the fire beat, but they would soon learn differently.

Delaney’s team was positioned in the northern most room, closest to the The Pantry convenience store. Parnell’s team was in the middle room. Then, Baker called into Parnell, alerting him to fire in the third room, a wall away from the jewelry store. Baker said fire was coming from the southern most, second-floor window.

About the same time, Delaney’s team discovered the storage room — full of fire. As both teams pushed the flames toward the front of the store, the fire began rolling over their heads across the ceiling. Suddenly, they found themselves battling flames at both ends of the room.

The flames from the third room and storage room crept closer. “The heat was overwhelming,” Delaney said. Back and forth they went, fighting fire from two directions with only one staircase out. “Every time you’d make a hit it came back in another place,” Delaney said. “We were playing tag with it.”

Parnell said the fire wasn’t darkening, and “we were losing ground.”

Soon the roof began to creek and in a domino effect ceiling beams crashed down around both teams. At this point, the men and women inside the building knew they had lost the second-floor battle. Delaney and Parnell radioed outside, calling a “code red.” Around 8 p.m., air horns on the fire trucks sounded, signaling that it was time to pull out of the building.

Delaney and Parnell ordered the others down the narrow wooden staircase and made one final sweep through the floor, making sure no one was left behind.

“I was really proud of these guys. I hate we lost it,” Delaney said. “This was not part of the battle plan.”

Exiting the building themselves, Delaney said, they knew they had lost the second floor. “Now it became personal.” They were determined to save the first floor.

“They stayed with it just as long as they could stay with it,” Fesperman, the Salisbury assistant chief, said.

Once everyone was out of the building, 911 center manager Frank Thomason and Spencer Assistant Chief Terry Smith, who also works with the Salisbury department, took a head-count. In less than five minutes, they had accounted for all firefighters.

Then the exterior attack began.

The Salisbury ladder trucks, during the interior attack, had been used for overview to provide information to people on the ground and in the building. “They were a tremendous help in determining the longevity that we could stay in that building,” Parnell said.

Had they shot water at the building with the firefighters inside, “this would have turned into a blast furnace on us,” Delaney said.

Now with everyone out, the ladder trucks launched their attack. Delaney said firefighters call that a “surround and drown,” aiming water from various directions.

At one point, two ladder trucks on the front and one at the rear rained water on the flames.

Within 45 minutes, Thomason said, the fire was under control, meaning that “forward progression of fire is stopped.” But not until 6:04 a.m. that Tuesday did officials tell the 911 center “assignment complete.”

Throughout the fire, Delaney said, firefighters were confident the fire would not spread down the block. Even as the ladder trucks attacked the flames, Delaney said he stood on the roof of the adjoining jewelry store, Barnhardt Jewelers, and felt the outside of the Stoudemire building with his bare hand and it was cold. The fire wall kept even heat from penetrating the wall.

Early in the evening, firefighters allowed Debbie Barnhardt back into her jewelry business to remove papers and other valuables. Six firefighters also moved coffee shop owner Jacqui Watson’s piano, fish tank, couch and other furniture. The belongings sat on the corner opposite Stoudemire for hours.

Most of the furniture store’s contents and the second floor were completely destroyed. The first floor sustained heavy damage from water and smoke. The mezzanine area, where firefighters first battled the flames from the warehouse, was blackened and littered with ash and debris.

But the exterior walls remain intact, and owners Tom and Peggy Gemayel still hope to rebuild.

With the great disappointment of losing so much in the fire also comes the success of keeping the fire from spreading to other buildings.

Delaney takes pride in the way the firefighters attacked the fire — their “aggression.”

“You could see it in their eyes,” he said. “Nobody wanted to give this thing up.”

Said Parnell: “Firefighters don’t like to lose.”

Added Bean, the Spencer officer: “We have always said in Spencer that if Stoudemire burned, we’d be lucky to save the whole block. We always knew if it happened there, it was going to be a big fire.”

And “if there is such a thing as success” in a fire, Baker said he was pleased with the way the many departments worked as a team.

“With that massive of a fire, it’s hard not to get somebody hurt,” he said.

Parnell credits the leadership of Baker, the incident commander. “Baker was making really good calls,” Parnell said. “Every firefighter that went to that fire went home. That’s a credit to Jay.”

Delaney feels the departments fought the fire “by the book.”

“We’re a proud bunch,” he said. “... We have some of the best firefighters in the state here in Rowan County.”

Along with the seven departments, Baker thanked Delaney and Assistant Fire Marshals Lyerly and John Thomason.

“Since he (Delaney) has taken this job, he’s added another dimension…a firefighting fire marshal,” Baker said. “He’s not afraid to get dirt under his fingernails.”

With seven fire departments, Emergency Medical Services and the Rowan Rescue Squad at the fire, Delaney’s third assistant, Dan Peters, remained on call to cover the rest of the county.

“The Fire Marshal’s Office played a big role in the whole operation’s success,” Parnell said.

Fire personnel, as well as members of the community, would like to see the business thrive again at that location. “If they can get back in that building, that’s a win for the fire departments,” Baker said.