by CHARLESTON, S.C. — Just days before many of us fired up the grill for what I hope was a fun Fourth, two firefighters in Idaho were inexplicably gunned down responding to a wildfire. This is evil in the extreme, and it is a tragic reminder of the risks our first responders take every day.
Each summer on June 18, the city of Charleston, South Carolina, has its own very tragic reminder, a memorial service for the Charleston Nine. Trapped inside a Sofa Super Store, nine firefighters lost their lives due to a confluence of factors that, as in most calamities, seemed to conspire against all good sense. The massive fire ripped through the 42,000-square-foot space, bringing down the roof and sending noxious gases into the air.
What followed is a script we’ve become all too familiar with in American life: lawsuits, investigations, promises not to forget, finger-pointing, memorials and a legacy of grief, mourning and pain. Rereading news accounts of this well-worn groove of post-conflagration proclamations and investigations, one cannot help but feel for the owner of the Sofa Super Store, Herb Goldstein, who in his own account had had a “perfect life” until, like the steel trusses holding up the showroom ceiling, it all came crashing down.
Goldstein had four furniture stores at the time, three Sofa Super Store locations and one Rooms for Less store. He sold Albany Industries, Klaussner, Ashley, Capri and others. Following the fire at the Savannah Highway location, a five-building complex that included the chain’s warehouse, Goldstein fought the good fight into December 2011. Citing a poor economy and sluggish housing starts, he decided then to call it quits.
He’d survived the dark days of 2007, a $2 million payout to settle lawsuits brought by families of the dead, and recriminations for failing to have either a sprinkler system or the necessary building permits for a new roof and a 1996 expansion, according to news accounts in the Charleston Post and Courier.
At one time a Piggly Wiggly, Goldstein’s Sofa Super Store in the West Ashley area of Charleston was cleared away, the site purchased by the city for a memorial park dedicated to the Charleston Nine. There are brick pedestals where the corners of the Sofa Super Store once stood. A tree marks where the fire began between a dock and the rear of the main building. Markers and plaques stand where each of the firefighters was found, and a bronze firefighter statue stands watch.
Just after the fire, Goldstein established the Charleston Nine Scholarship Endowment with a startup donation of $100,000, hoping to defray college tuition costs for first responders and their children, according to the Post and Courier.
‘We shall never forget’
On behalf of the nine, the city promised never to forget, a pledge reminiscent of 9/11, which makes sense, because June 18 saw the largest single loss of firefighters since the attacks on the World Trade Center. Charleston has lived up to its promise, marking the sad occasion each and every year since with pageantry and poignancy, including this year, which is how I learned of the tragedy.
Like other notable disasters, and here I’m thinking of the Challenger space shuttle explosion and the sinking of the Titanic, the Sofa Super Store fire proved a perfect storm of calamity. Human hubris conspired with a cascade of unfortunate circumstances to kill those nine and alter the arc of the Goldsteins’ lives. For Titanic, the hubris presented as confidence that “God himself couldn’t sink this ship.” The circumstances included iceberg watchers in the crow’s nest bereft of binoculars, a calm April night in which no surf splash could be evidenced at the foot of the bergs, and too much dross in the tiny rivets holding the huge vessel together. For Challenger, these circumstances included ice on the shuttle’s thrusters and the space age equivalent of Titanic’s rivet problem: faulty O-rings.
In West Ashley, these circumstances include the absence of a sprinkler system; flammable, polyurethane foam-filled sofas; and confusion among and within the various fire battalions and volunteers swarming at the scene, according to the many newspaper accounts at the time, including impressive, caring coverage by the local Post and Courier newspaper.
According to a story in The State newspaper, there was such confusion on scene regarding how many firefighters were missing and who they were that the fire chief issued orders to Ladder 5’s firefighters without realizing that the entire company was trapped in the building and that their equipment was being operated by off-duty firefighters who showed up to pitch in.
Hindsight’s cruelty
Goldstein told the Post and Courier a few weeks after the fire that he wished he had put sprinklers in the building. But, he said they were expensive and not required when he built the showroom and warehouse in 1992.
“No one said this is a dangerous product and you need sprinklers,” he told the newspaper, though he said he wasn’t making excuses. “I didn’t lose any loved ones. I can’t imagine what the families of the firefighters are going through.”
He said he relied on the Fire Department to make him aware of any potential problems. “Had I known there was a danger, I would have corrected them immediately,” Goldstein told the paper in July 2007.
In all three instances of perfect storms — Challenger, Titanic and Sofa Super Store — some good did eventually emerge. NASA’s space program overhauled to tighten up safety standards. Titanic led to a raft (pun intended, as puns always are) of international law designed to ensure, among other things, enough life boats for all passengers of a vessel. And since Sofa Super Store, fire departments throughout the country have altered their training regimens and protocols. Charleston’s Fire Department spent $8 million on upgrades to training, tactics and equipment in the aftermath of June 2007. Several investigations, including one by the ATF, revealed crucial lessons for fire and rescue, specifically regarding command, control, accountability and discipline at emergency scenes, experts have said.
Symbolic changes have also been made. Engine 11’s quarters, for example, were moved to a property next door to the Super Sofa Store site now owned by the city. Nine large windows face the grounds of what was the furniture showroom. And every morning at 9, a bell tower in front of the station tolls nine times.
As for Goldstein, he ended two decades selling furniture in 2011, coincidentally the same month that RoomStore filed for bankruptcy. His Sofa Super Store at 708 Johnnie Dodds Blvd. in Mount Pleasant became a liquor store in 2013. The location at 8551 Rivers Ave. in North Charleston now is a trampoline park.
When he reopened two weeks after the fire, down a flagship store and a warehouse for all three locations, he told the Post and Courier, “We open as a forever-changed company.”
‘Wet nap, please!’
Doing research this far back and gleaning so many details invariably turns up a few surprises. For me for this story, it’s fond memories of Father’s Day festivities for our family.
Applying Bacon’s Law, I can connect with Goldstein in two steps. When his son, Jeff, and some of Jeff’s friends sought to start up a barbecue restaurant, Herb helped them out. Drawing on his own experience selling hickory-smoked ribs in Chattanooga, the elder Goldstein set the young entrepreneurs up in a former Po’ Folks in Charleston. At least, this is what Sticky Fingers’s corporate legend and lore suggests.
Our family loved Sticky Fingers in downtown Chattanooga. Dry-rub full rack with Carolina Sweet sauce? Yes, please! The full rack, a double order of fries and a Chattanooga Lookouts baseball game became a Father’s Day tradition in the Carroll household. (Here’s a fun story on Sticky Fingers with photos from the archives. Sticky Fingers filed for bankruptcy four months ago.)
Before we close out this column and the week that has hopefully included a Fun Fourth for you and for your families, I’d like to encourage furniture business owners out there to make sure your facilities are up to code, your sprinkler systems are in good working order and that you have an emergency evacuation plan for disasters. I’m sure Mr. Goldstein would echo this plea, and I hope somewhere he has found a measure of peace. He turns 83 this month.
One more item of business: the roll call.
- Engineer Brad Baity, 37 (Engine 19, nine years of service).
- Captain Mike Benke, 49 (Engine 16, 29 years of service).
- Firefighter Melvin Champaign, 46 (Engine 16, two years of service).
- Firefighter James “Earl” Drayton, 56 (Engine 19, 32 years of service).
- Assistant Engineer Michael “Frenchie” French, 27 (Ladder 5, 18 months of service).
- Captain William “Billy” Hutchinson, 48 (Engine 19, 30 years of service).
- Engineer Mark Kelsey, 40 (Ladder 5, 12 years of service).
- Captain Louis Mulkey, 34, (Engine 15, 11 years of service).
- Firefighter Brandon Thompson, 27, (Ladder 5, four years of service).
