Existing comment:
1976 Spot News: Boston Fire:
July 22, 1975, was a brutally hot day. But quitting time had to wait for Boston Herald American photographer Stanley Forman, who heard a report of a fire and followed screaming firetrucks to a "roaring, roaring inferno" in Boston's Back Bay.
Forman spotted them in the back of the six-story apartment building: a young woman and a child on the fire escape, just feet from the firestorm, looking for help. A ladder rose toward the pair. "Everything was fine," Forman said, "I was just shooting a routine rescue. Switching lenses, switching cameras. All of the sudden, boom! It just crashes." The fire escape ripped away from the building. The woman was falling, the child was falling, metal was flying.
"I'm thinking, 'Just keep shooting.' And I'm looking and shooting." Then a bell went off in his head. "I didn't want to see them hit." Forman turned away. The 19-year-old woman died. Miraculously, her 3-year-old niece survived. |