3000 Degrees: The True Story Of A Deadly Fire And The Men Who Fought It
Average Rating
During the long night of December 3, 1999, a windowless, century-old storage building in downtown Worchester, Mass., was turned into a six-story stove. In gripping prose ("The smoke banked down like bolts of black velvet, heavy sheets curling and rolling and folding together"), Flynn describes how, once ignited, the deserted Worchester Cold Storage building must have been the perfect structure for a perfect fire. In a style similar to Sebastian Junger's, Flynn's chapters hustle from disastrous city fires that occurred earlier that summer, building tension and setting the scene for the final disaster in this tottering working-class New England town. With confident, deft description, Flynn brings to life this 3,000-degree catastrophe with a crackling intensity, which, unfortunately, he never quite achieves for the people within his story. The human element doesn't quite live up to what he presented in his first award-winning Esquire magazine piece that won notice for the survivors as well as the spouses and parents of the six firemen who were killed. Likewise, Flynn minimizes the subsequent police investigation and forensics that made national headlines for weeks after the fire. Nonetheless, the same work ethos that made New York City firemen and rescue companies run into the doomed World Trade Center towers is here in a smaller dimension but equally intense story of fire-fighting tragedy. Photos, blueprints and map not seen by PW.
Non-Fiction
Most recent 4 reviews out of 4
Submitted by Anonymous
This is okay.....I couldn't help thinking of all of the firefighters who lost their lives during 911. It's probably a terrible thing to say...but there have been so many "disaster" movies and documentaries that it is easy to become desensitized to them all. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a real "story" about real people.
Submitted by Anonymous
Liked the story.
Typical format - here are the people - follow them into the situation - watch the impact of their loss on their families etc.
Great description of the internals of being in a fire from a firefighter's viewpoint
Submitted by Anonymous in Brandon,
Too many grisly details, the kind you hope are descriptions for people who survive against terrible odds instead of those that die brutal deaths. It did seem to exploit those same families it wanted you to feel sympathy for. But it was very educating, because I didn't know about the fire before. It also brought to life exactly what it takes to be a fireman, and how courageous those that choose that path and their families must be.
Submitted by Karen V
At times I didn't feel good listening to this cd. Something is off about the motivation for writing the book, it's oddly ghoulish in describing the slow deaths of the firefighters and is falsely sympathetic to the families. This book was scheduled to be filmed in Toronto as a major motion picture but Toronto fiefighters shut down production at the request of their Worchester brethren who didn't want the movie made out of respect for the pain of the families. However, this is the only book about the Worchester fire and Christopher Walker is the perfect reader, he has a trace of a Massachusetts accent and does a dead-on local Worchester accent for the dialoge. See what you think.
Genres 
Biographies
