ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 13, 1995 TAG: 9512140001
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: METHUEN, MASS.
SOURCE: RICHARD LORANT ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE SUCCESS STORY of Malden Mills will return, says its fourth-generation owner. Nobody says how soon.
An explosion and fire didn't just level most of the Malden Mills textile factory.
It destroyed a near-miraculous success story of the New England textile industry. It threatened the supply of fleecy Polartec fabric to customers such as L.L. Bean. And it put at least 1,400 people out of work just before Christmas.
The fire Monday night began with an explosion so powerful it blew out the sprinkler system. Four of the five vast buildings were reduced to smoking piles of brick, wood and metal. Thirty-three people were injured, eight critically.
The mill had stood at the heart of a textile city that blossomed in the War of 1812. It was rebuilt after a fire in 1866 and produced steadily until hard times in the 1920s and '30s. Malden Mills moved into the complex in the 1950s.
The company provided valuable jobs in a depressed area with its development of Polartec, the warm, fleecy synthetic material used in outdoor gear sold by many popular sporting goods stores.
The fabric, made solely by Malden Mills, helped bring the family-owned company out of bankruptcy in the 1980s and represents nearly half its annual $500 million in sales. The company projected last month that sales of Polartec would reach $1 billion annually in five years.
Partly because of the sophisticated manufacturing process used to convert recycled soda bottles into the patented 100 percent polyester fabric, Malden Mills pays employees an average $12.50 an hour, compared with the industry average $9.44.
``This place here has put first-generation immigrants into the middle class,'' said Norman Menzies, a local contractor, as he looked over the devastation.
Owner Aaron Feuerstein, who learned of the fire during his 70th birthday party, promised to rebuild. But he gave no timetable. ``It was a terrible thing, but I didn't dwell on the tragedy,'' said Feuerstein, the fourth generation of his family to run the business. ``I was only thinking of how to rebuild and how to get jobs back to people as soon as possible.''
The cause of the 16-hour blaze was under investigation. The fire was fed by cloth and chemicals.
Firefighters were hampered by icy 45 mph winds and a water shortage caused by building walls collapsing on the hoses. Chunks of burning wood fell on other businesses and homes, causing at least three other fires.
``It was raining fire,'' said Vernon Bushway of Lawrence, one of 700 people at work when the fire broke out. ``People were falling down. Everybody was screaming, crying.''
Gov. William Weld said the state will try to waive the two-week wait for unemployment benefits.
That was little consolation to Marcelle Gagnon who, with her husband, worked 25 years at the factory, saving enough to buy a home and a new car.
``It's just like I got a knife right through my heart,'' Gagnon said. ``Now we ask ourselves, `How are we going to survive?'''
Her husband, Jean, said: ``When you work there, that's your life burning.''
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP photo ran on A-1. color.by CNB