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Lowell Fire Department

Lowell Firefighters of the Year 2000

At the Annual Firefighters Ball held at Mt. Pleasant Country Club on November 11th, 2000. Local #853 IAFF presented its annual Awards for Heroism. Lieutenant Henry Lohmer, Firefighters Oscar Torres and Rodney Panneton were chosen Firefighters of the Year 2000.

On January 21 at 20:57 hrs. a call was received by Fire Alarm for a building fire at 465 High Street. Upon arrival and under heavy fire conditions, the trio rescued three victims from the fire that ripped through the two-family home on a brutally cold night punctuated by high winds. The fire claimed the lives of two members of a Cambodian family of nine. Bunna Vanna Phan, 38, was burned on more than 80 percent of his body and died March 1. His 4-year-old daughter Vannara died in the blaze, which started when an electrical extension cord overheated.

Lowell Deputy Chief Bill Desrosiers said that call was "one of the most horrific" he could remember. High winds blew through holes burned in the rear of the house and whipped acrid smoke into an oppressive cloud that enveloped nearly the entire first and second floors. "In 24 years, I never remember the smoke being that thick on the ground," Desrosiers said. "The firefighters were soaked and sweating from the heat inside, and then they were going outside and getting covered with ice from the spray." The air temperature that night hovered at 7 degrees, and winds gusting up to 35 mph lowered wind chills to 45 degrees below zero.

Lt. Theodore R. Lemire and firefighter Wallace L. Johnson were also given awards of valor for pulling an elderly man from an apartment fire at Centennial Islands on July 18. Johnson and Lemire entered the smoky apartment to bring Larry Frenette to safety without even the protection of a hose to knock down flames and clear a path.

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