SALEM – Area news included the groundbreaking for the Lordstown General Motors plant and hearings on relocating U.S. Route 62 north of Salem.

On the national front, the U.S.S.R. launched a record three astronauts into orbit in one spacecraft and in Congress the Gulf of Tonkin incident was being investigated.

This was all right around October 1964 when the Hotel Metzger fire hit the local papers on Friday, Oct. 23.

Three people were killed and one firefighter broke his leg battling the blaze that occurred on Oct. 22. It was the city’s worst fire, according to research and it occurred 50 years ago this Thursday.

It started early in the evening and ripped through the two top floors of the four-story hotel in downtown. Some 40 people, many elderly residents, fled with their lives as the fire raged out of control, threatening nearby buildings.

When it was over, all the possessions many residents had were the clothes they wore.

Located at 477 E. State, the Metzger housed several street-front stores on the first floor. Today the Sisters Antiques store is located on one corner lot, as the hotel stretched about a third of the way up State Street toward Broadway Avenue.

The fire started in Room 333. Edna Bailey, a 70-year-old resident, just returned from the doctor’s office and was thinking about preparing supper.

According to the Salem News, she opened the door and found her bed on fire and immediately ran downstairs for help, yelling “Fire!”

Another resident said he was en route to his room when he heard someone yell, “Fire!”

It was about 5:30 p.m. when Clarence Fuller heard the scream and grabbed an extinguisher from a hallway mount and raced to the room.

In the lobby, 17-year-old Salem High School senior Carl Ostrum manned the front desk, filling in for his mother who was donating blood at the Prospect Street CIO hall. The two resided in the hotel.

Reacting quickly, before leaving his desk, Ostrum called the fire department and then raced into action making several trips on the elevator to rescue terrified residents on the top floors.

Fuller got to Room 333 but the intensity of the flames drove him back. Flames raced through the top floors of the 100-year-old building and as they did, city officials spread the word, making radio pleas, for people to stay away from the area.

Carl Stacey, the Columbiana County Clerk of Courts, was in the lobby at the Democratic Party headquarters and assisted in helping residents out.

That done, Stacey, a volunteer firefighter himself, went outside as firefighters arrived and helped by moving one of the pumper trucks.

The Salem News reported, “About 40 people, most of them elderly, were evacuated as the blaze whipped out of control and threatened to spread to nearby buildings.

“Two aged residents were trapped on the top floor of the four-story building and were assisted down the rear fire escape by firefighters.”

Firefighters arrived with Lt. Amil Cosma in command (Fire Chief Elmer Bush was out of town) and he directed all the on-scene activity while all off-duty personnel were called in. The Winona Fire Department arrived on the scene with six firefighters and one truck that stood by at the Salem Fire Department.

Every piece of firefighting equipment the SFD had was put to use.

Citizens volunteered and Cosma credited them with providing “invaluable assistance.”

A woman with four small children, one 14 months old, fled from the building.

City officials arrived and Mayor Dean B. Cranmer, Safety Director Ed Mallay and Utilities Department Superintendent Bill Thompson all pitched in as well as Clarence W. Wright.

The paper reported that Wright “put on a helmet and entered the blazing building to help direct operations and former firefighter Harvey Lodge also assisted.”

The story continued, “Disregarding their own safety, firemen climbed into the second floor of the structure and directed hoses upward.”

Another group of firefighters and volunteers ran a hose to the top of the adjacent J.C. Penney’s store to the east, across N. Lundy Avenue.

From there, firefighters trained a powerful stream of water onto the hotel roof but about an hour-and-a-half into battling the flames, the roof on the old building caved in.

The Salem News reported that sparks flew so high they were “visible from miles away.”

There were thousands of sightseers already on the scene – close enough for police to cordon off the area as firefighters were alarmed the walls would collapse.

The downtown area was barricaded to traffic between Lincoln and Ellsworth avenues as police, sheriff deputies and state troopers assisted in traffic and crowd control.

Among the crowd were Al Lesch, later elected to city council president and now retired, and his pal, Rudd Wilson.

Lesch worked at the Deming company. He and Wilson shared an apartment at N. Union Avenue and Cleveland Street, halfway across town from the fire.

“We could hear sirens and looked out the window and saw all the smoke and wondered what was going on,” Lesch recalled.

“We drove up and parked at Zimmerman’s (the Oldsmobile dealership on the southeast corner of N. Lundy Avenue and E. 2nd Street) and walked up and it was blocked off.

“We were just standing there watching the fire and Dudley Taylor and Dave Huffman (both Salem firefighters) saw us and said, ‘We need some help. C’mon you guys, we need some help.’

“So we went around back, where Josie’s Pizza is now and held a fire hose from about 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. when somebody took our places.

“Rudd sat on the back of the fire truck. It was cold – it had gotten cold – and we were wet and I remember getting up and talking to somebody and Rudd had been sitting on the back of the fire truck maybe 15 minutes and he just fell over,” Lesch said.

“There was a leak in the fire truck’s exhaust and they kept him overnight in the hospital and let him go the next day and city council took care of his medical expenses.

“We didn’t get paid, it was a just a good deed. It was pretty wild, pretty interesting. We didn’t know if anyone was in there. We knew that Bill Breault broke his leg.”

Breault got his left leg caught on the 80-foot aerial ladder he was working on. He was in fair condition in the hospital the next day.

About 10 hotel residents were taken to the Lape Hotel by the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army found shelter for five others who lived there.

Relief agencies and Aldom’s Diner provided food and coffee for evacuees as the blaze persisted for four hours.

The cause of the fire, what the Salem News described as “the city’s worst in many years” was undetermined immediately but it was believed that overloaded electric wires were to blame.

A steam boiler “blew out about two weeks ago,” the Salem News story said, “and residents had been operating electric heaters in their rooms to keep warm.”

Nearby businesses suffered heavy water and smoke damage.

Chris Paparodis, owner of the hotel, was unable to place a damage estimate on the partially insured building. Initial estimates ran as high as a half-million dollars.

Three men, two elderly, died including Harry Coburn, 79, a retired farmer; Thomas Harry, 76, who was retired from Deming; and Charles Richard Bray, 46, who was a draftsman at the E.W. Bliss Co. They were all residents.

Firefighters doused flames while they searched for Bray’s body and all three were determined to have died from asphyxiation.

The next day, city officials, merchants and bankers conferred for two hours on how to finance the demolition work. Downtown stores were closed. E. State Street to Lundy Avenue was closed off that Friday afternoon after the fire.

The Salem News wrote, “This has resulted in complaints from a number of merchants and also because State Street is being roped off the two block between Lincoln and Broadway avenues. ‘This is hurting our business,’ they complained at last nights meeting.”

Lesch recalled the restaurant in the hotel.

“I’ll tell you what, it was an excellent place to eat. Hamburger, fries and a coke for like $1.50. It was a pretty cool place, it was neat in there. Like a lot of those old buildings there was a lot of nostalgia, wooden booths, tables in the center and the Gold Bar was a pretty nice place.”

Lesch remembered that right after the fire that employees of the Gold Bar “went around giving everyone a shot to warm themselves up. It was pretty cold.”