Mildred Reinsfelder still shudders when she hears the wail of a fire engine's siren.
It brings back too many memories of the Tru-Fit clothing store fire that 40 years ago today claimed the life of her husband, Anthony, and five other Baltimore firefighters.
Decades after the three-story building collapsed, trapping firefighters under piles of rubble, the pain is fresh. Widows remain bitter over meager death benefits. A fire captain is stubbornly pursuing an investigation to find the cause of the blaze. And tonight, a long-overdue memorial service will be held at the fire scene, just east of The Block.
Mrs. Reinsfelder, 70, plans to be there, despite fears of reopening old memories. "They want to know how I feel. I feel damn mad. Our husbands lost their lives, and we were cheated. We gave up our husbands, and for what? Nobody cares anymore."
But firefighters hope the memorial service -- a candlelight vigil in the 500 block of E. Baltimore St., where the Tru-Fit Clothing Co. once stood -- will show they do care.
"This particular fire will never be forgotten," says Capt. Stephan Fugate, whose father-in-law, Edgar Scheydt, was among 28 firefighters injured in the blaze.
"Too many people have gone to their graves thinking that we have forgotten about them," he wrote in a union newsletter. "Although it may be difficult to return to the scene and recount the tragedy, it's time that we do."
The first of nine alarms sounded at 9:02 p.m., Feb. 16, 1955, bringing hundreds of firefighters to battle the ferocious blaze.
It was under control by 10:45 p.m.
dTC Disaster struck five minutes later.
"There was a terrific roar and the roof of the building collapsed, pulling the rear wall in on top of these men," the late Bill Murray, who worked on a Fire Department snack wagon, wrote in a first-person account.
He added that "an awful silence fell over the wagon as we all sensed the doom that was to befall our friends."
Mrs. Reinsfelder first heard about the fire when a television show was interrupted for a sketchy report. She called the Fire Department but couldn't get through.
"I knew something was wrong," she recalls. "I went to bed and said prayers."
The knock on the door of her home in Belair-Edison came about 4:30 a.m -- from a battalion chief, two neighbors and a priest. "I said, 'Where is my husband?' They said they didn't know. They hadn't found his body yet."
It wasn't until the next afternoon that all six bodies were pulled from the rubble. Dead were Francis P. O'Brien, Joseph C. Hanley, Rudolph A. Machovec, Richard F. Melzer, William W. Barnes and Mr. Reinsfelder.
Headlines in the Evening Sun and Baltimore News-Post blared the news across the front-page. The newspapers established tragedy funds -- The Sun published the names of every donor.
And as the city's entire homicide squad took up the investigation, writers cried for answers -- "Let's Find Cause of Fire Tragedies," said a front-page News-Post editorial.
But four decades later, officials are no closer to solving the case -- or proving how the fire started.
"This tragedy has never really come to a completion," says Fire Chief Herman Williams Jr., who had been on the force for just a year when the fire occurred. "We just don't want to let it go. We still think about those men and what they did to protect this city."
Captain Fugate, who works in the Fire Investigation Bureau, thinks about it, too. "It's very frustrating. I've read the report, which is 90 pages single-spaced, and quite frankly, there is little of any substance to the investigation.
"There are no conclusions. Knowing what I know about fires, if you read the report, you can't help draw your own conclusions that the fire was no accident."
But officially, no cause has been determined. Officially, the blaze has not been ruled an arson. Officially, the case is still open, but not actively being pursued.
Among those questioned after the fire were store owner Herman E. Goldstein and his sons, Leonard and Sidney, who were among the last to leave -- seven minutes before the fire was discovered.
Dozens of people were interviewed but none charged, leaving some nagging questions for Captain Fugate, who says he took (( on the cause because his injured father-in-law was "very unhappy that the investigation never produced a suspect. . . . I see this as maybe a last opportunity to try and get somebody to step forward with some information."
For example, he says, investigators only found a handful of metal buttons amid the debris of the fire. Hundreds should have been found if the store had held all the clothes that company officials claimed had been destroyed.
And, he says, a customer was shooed away from the building at 8:55 p.m. by employees who said the store was closing early. Seven minutes later, a doorman at a nearby nightclub saw the flames and pulled the alarm on a firehouse across the street.
Sidney Goldstein, whose father has died, says he does not remember being asked questions by police.
"It's just something I would like to leave alone," he says, calling reports that the fire was arson "hearsay. . . . Nobody was ever convicted of that. There is nothing really that I have to say."
L The firefighters' widows have plenty to talk about, however.
The death benefit checks still come, but total only $255 every two weeks -- half of their husbands' salary at the time, plus cost-of-living raises.
Money from fund-raisers ran out years ago. And the families now wonder what happened to the $168,000 that was supposed to have been distributed. They claim they only got the interest off the money -- $30,000 apiece spread over 18 years -- and wonder what happened to the principal.
News reports after the fire gave a false impression that the families were taken care of, several widows claim.
"Everyone thought we had a wonderful life," says Mrs. Reinsfelder, who had two children and was pregnant with the third at the time of the fire. She did odd jobs to get by. "They had no idea what we went through. But we survived. . . .
"I had a $10,000 mortgage, 97 cents in my pocket and three kids. . . . If it wasn't for my parents, I would have been out on the street."
The Tru-Fit fire spurred reform. Widows of later firefighters got their husbands' full pay for life -- instead of half. Now they get $131,000 from the federal government plus $50,000 from the state.
Meanwhile, the fire has had other, long-lasting effects. Mrs. Reinsfelder's youngest daughter, Antoinette, just came to terms with her father's death two years ago -- at age 37, and only after her mother handed her a box filled with news clippings.
Mrs. Reinsfelder recalls: "My daughter said, 'Mom, now I know what you went through. Now I know why you were crying all the time.' "
And, Mrs. Reinsfelder says, she once refused to ride in an ambulance to the hospital, fearing the memories it would stir up would be too painful.
"We'll never forget," she says, referring to other widows. "There will always be ambulances and fire engines."