About us: The Fire at Hampden/Zimmerman

Early morning on Sunday, July 19, 1998, the corporate headquarters and main branch of Hampden/Zimmerman Electric Supply in Springfield, Massachusetts burned to the ground.

Although we were situated next door to the main Springfield fire station, our building was on a list as being likely to be destroyed in the event of a fire. We had no sprinkler system and no fire detection system. It was an old building with numerous add-ons which made it easy for the water from the hoses to actually spread the fire to places where it couldn't be fought.

The fire smoldered in the counter area for many hours before erupting and being seen by a passerby at 3 in the morning who alerted the fire station next door. The fire raged for hours, fed by the asphalt roof as it collapsed. The Springfield skyline was covered with great plumes of smoke from the fire.

Monday morning we were able to open our Northampton and Pittsfield branches for business.

We sent part of the office staff, counter & inside sales people up to the Northampton store, our closest branch. Our trucks had been saved and we determined to do as much delivery as was necessary to service the Springfield area from Northampton.

We had some overstock storage in a building across the street from the Springfield branch. We left some employees there to take a physical of what was left and to service customers. The building had no phones (or services of any kind!) and one of the more memorable sights was seeing our receptionist staring at the 3 cell phones that various employees had donated to the effort. For three weeks, her job went from dealing with a standard operator's board to juggling independent, battery-sucking cell phones.

Then the search was on for temporary space. We located some in Chicopee, about 5 minutes from the old Springfield store and 20 minutes from the Northampton store.

The building had formerly been a discount department store and we had to turn it into areas for warehouse stock, functional offices, and a lighting showroom.

The warehouse we created by duct taping "aisles" for pallets in the main part of the store. We would eventually create some temporary shelving out of pallets and 2x4's as well as salvaging rejected shelving rusting in piles outside of one of our branches. Our Will Call person turned into a real scavenger and saved enough twisted and burnt shelving from the old building to make do for his department. Unfortunately, he liked the smell of those old shelves so much he has since taken up cigar smoking.

The offices were groups of desks put along on the sides of the store. We bolted down 2x4's and ran temporary lines for power, phones, and computers.

One of our counter guys was a closet carpenter and he built counters for the warehouse, Will Call and the showroom.

Our lighting showroom took longer to create, but by the time it was complete, it was as good as any permanent showroom out there. We put up clouds to hang fixtures from and temporary walls with display fixtures became the walls of the showroom itself. Within a month after the fire, the showroom opened with over a thousand fixtures on display.

We stayed in our temporary Chicopee location for almost 2 years and then moved to our new location at 274 Taylor Street in Springfield in June of 2000.

Get details on the move on our page about rebuilding the Springfield Branch.