Remembering the Maverick Square fire that killed six firefighters - two weeks before the Cocoanut Grove fire

Shortly before 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 15, 1942 - a fire broke out in the ceiling above the first-floor kitchen of Luongo's Tap on Henry Street in East Boston - just 2 1/2 hours after some 200 couples had gathered for some dancing in the place's second-floor dance hall. Boston firefighters responded to what grew into a three-alarm blaze in the five-story brick building.

Around 4 a.m, according to an account by the Boston Fire Historical Society, one of the building's walls, without warning, collapsed.

Nearly fifty firefighters were injured or trapped in the collapse. Upon removal of all firefighters present at the scene, six died as a result of their injuries. The six firemen killed in the Line Of Duty at the scene equaled the record number of Line Of Duty deaths suffered by the Boston Fire Department at a single incident in the Department’s history. That incident was the Merrimac Street Fire and Collapse of 1898.

The society's account lists the names and provides photos of the six firefighters who died that morning.

Photo of the scene.

Michael Laurano pays tribute to the firefighters - and the people who rushed to the scene to help pull them out of the rubble:

Clergy entered the still dangerous ruins extending the comforts of faith to those trapped there. As word of the disaster spread by radio, telephone and telegraph wire - then our only means of instant communication - soon at the horrific scene also were multitudes of other responders civilian and military. Coast Guardsmen, Police, ambulance drivers, medical and other support personnel, and newspaper reporters too each played a part by their devotion to duty in East Boston’s epically tragic story of the "Luongo Fire."

Two weeks later, 492 people died in the Cocoanut Grove disaster in Bay Village.