East Stroudsburg blaze, 35 years later: 'It was like half the world was on fire'

Longtime East Stroudsburg residents still shudder at memories
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Charred and destroyed Crystal Street businesses and apartments after the April 30, 1978, fire.Pocono Record file photo
Andrew Scott

It was shortly before noon on Sunday, April 30, 1978.

The day was sunny and windy with temperatures in the 50s.

Ken Miller, then chief of Acme Hose Volunteer Fire Co., was heading home from the grocery store, turning from North Courtland Street onto Analomink Street and driving east toward Crystal Street.

On Miller's right was the building then housing Pocono Business Furniture, owned by Michael Vonson, and Jay's Restaurant, owned by John J. Coleman, at Analomink and Crystal streets.

Waving to workers loading items through the furniture store's bay door onto a truck for an upcoming sale at Mount Airy Resort, Miller continued on his way home just blocks away on State Street.

"Everything looked fine," said lifelong East Stroudsburg resident and borough councilman Ed Flory, now 74, a U.S. Army National Guard veteran who joined the fire company in 1966.

'Just took off'

But, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, a fire had started by undetermined means and was growing somewhere at the rear of the building, which housed the restaurant and furniture store.

Minutes later, an attendant in the railroad tower across Crystal Street, in charge of operating the railroad crossing gates, saw flames shatter the restaurant's windows outward.

"The fire must have been burning for a while where no one could detect it, until the furniture store opened that big bay door and gave it ventilation," Miller said. "After that, it just took off."

The railroad tower attendant called 911, which led to the alarm that 35 years ago today alerted the community to what became one of the two biggest fires in Crystal Street's and probably the entire borough's history.

Smoke rising

Flory sat Thursday in the lounge of the firehouse, which had operated for 83 years in the former borough building on North Courtland Street before relocating in 2010 to the former Cooper Industries building at Lackawanna Avenue and Chestnut Street.

On the lounge walls are photos of past fires, including one showing a firetruck tipped over near PNC Bank off North Courtland Street.

On one wall is a photo of the 1978 Crystal Street fire, with bystanders watching from the Analomink Street side as firefighters attacked the blaze.

Flory was working that morning with fellow volunteer firefighters Bill LaBar and Dave Scoble in the gardening center he owned at Henry Street and Lenox Avenue.

"When the whistle went off, we went outside and saw the smoke rising," he said.

An eighth-generation Monroe County native who at the time lived in East Stroudsburg's oldest house — built in 1780 on North Courtland Street — Flory called his wife at home and told her he and his fellow firefighters were heading to the scene.

Kids, cat evacuated

A U.S. Navy veteran and retired electrical contractor who joined the fire company in 1967, Miller, now 70, heard the whistle as he was taking groceries out of his car shortly after arriving home, and saw the smoke rising in the distance.

"I just left the groceries right there on the curb, which my wife wasn't too happy about, and took off to the scene," he said, laughing.

On Crystal Street, Helen Marsh (now Helen Sterner) and her children, Dale, then 16; Sherry, then 15; and Rodney, then 12, were resting in their apartment above what was then H.L. Cleveland Plumbing, next to the restaurant, after hiking out at Lake Minsi earlier that morning.

"Frank Smith, who was with the fire company, banged on our door and told us the building was on fire," said Sterner, H.L. Cleveland's secretary at the time, now a remarried grandmother living in Lehigh County.

"I grabbed my purse, my kids and my cat, and we got out."

'Whole life disappear'

The Marshes helped neighbor Emily Stevison, then 79, out to safety.

On the street, they met their other neighbors, Art and Thelma Auer, who had lived there since the 1950s.

"What started out as a beautiful day became such a horrible day," Sterner said, recalling how she and her children watched as the building they had called home for more than 10 years went up in flames.

"It was like watching a giant chimney. Those buildings were over 100 years old and they just went up without any trouble. I was watching my whole life disappear."

Lost were children's pictures and baseball cards, mementos, antiques and an oil-on-canvas painting Sterner had done of a beach with waves.

None of it could be covered by her renter's insurance, which had expired.

Aiming deluge guns

The call went out to Acme Hose and Stroudsburg, Stroud Township and several other fire companies.

By the time firefighters began arriving, the fire was spreading south along Crystal Street from the corner restaurant/furniture store building on Analomink Street.

"It was like half the world was on fire," Miller said. "The smoke was so thick it blocked out the sun."

The buildings adjoined each other then, as they do now.

The fire burned through the walls, going from building to building, and had begun burning into H.L. Cleveland Plumbing, next to the restaurant.

"We were concerned about the flames reaching the acetylene bottles they stored in the plumbing business and causing an explosion, so we got those out of there," Miller said.

Firefighters saw they needed to position themselves ahead of the fire and attack from where it was going to be, while hitting it from all other sides.

Firefighters dammed up a creek at nearby Eli and Henry streets to use as additional water supply.

While doing so, they cut a hole in the roof of one of the buildings, pulled down the ceiling and waited for the fire to arrive.

When it did, they sprayed it with water from "deluge gun" hoses.

Yet another fire in 1995

While no one was injured, other affected businesses included Pink Puff Beauty Salon, Alpenhorn, Kresge Drug and Leon Trager's clock repair/sales store.

A beauty salon, cash-for-gold store, cigar shop, tattoo parlor and chiropractor's office are now where those businesses once stood.

The fire caused millions of dollars in damages and cost the borough even more in property tax revenues for more than a year afterward.

Some businesses relocated while others never reopened, but that part of Crystal Street eventually was rebuilt with new businesses coming in.

Residents likewise relocated and stayed temporarily with family or friends or were helped by the Red Cross.

Crystal Street's second major fire, in October 1995, started on the same side of the street, near the center of that same block.

"That was another one that caused a lot of damage and crippled the business district," Flory said. "But, somehow, things always manage to go on sooner or later."

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