Wells Fargo History Museum, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Stories and Images of the Fire:

 

Jeffrey P, Minneapolis
As a young 17 year old living on the other end of downtown Minneapolis at the time, me and a few friends strolled down to see the aftermath and it was utterly amazing and an almost surreal sight. It was almost a picture out of the movie "Dr. Zhivago" and the snow covered / ice covered home scene. There was so much water poured onto the fire that downtown Minneapolis was a thick coating of ice "Truly amazing".

 

John H., Bloomington
I was having Thanksgiving dinner at my in-laws home in Woodbury when pictures of the fire came on the television late in the afternoon. On the way home to Mound that evening we drove into the downtown area which was filled with smoke. We were told not to go to work the next day but on Monday we were operating three floors below ground in the operations center on Washington Avenue. That day we spent callin gour clients and assuring them that all their assets were safe and that the safety deposit boxes had not been harmed. Later that week we were able to go into the bank ( my office was on the fifth floor) and retrieve files and papers from our desks.We also were able to see the destruction on the sixth floor which also contained offices from fellow trust department employees and the lowest floor the fire reached. For years whenever a document was missing or something couldnít be found the stock answer always was ì it burned in the fireî.

Pat K., Minneapolis
In 1985, I spent some time in Minneapolis working with the Norwest Mortgage accounting team. That team had been located in the Norwest building at the time of the fire. Two women on the accounting team had been allowed in the burned building after the fire to recover whatever records they could, and they took pictures during their "tour". They shared their pictures and their experience with me, and I will share what I remember. Unfortunately, both of the women left Norwest/Wells Fargo in 1986, and I have lost touch with them, so it isn't likely that their pictures can be obtained.

When they were escorted onto the floor where they had worked, EVERYTHING they saw was black and covered with a thick soot (that caused the floor to be somewhat slippery). They went over to their "fire-safe" file cabinets, and unlocked them. When they opened the top drawer, they saw that the edges of all of the papers and folders were burned, but it appeared that the files had survived ... until they touched one to pull it out of the drawer. Suddenly, what had appeared to be intact file folders dropped into a large pile of ash at the bottom of the drawer. (They later learned that the fire-safe filing cabinets were rated to withstand fire for an hour or two, and the fire had burned hotter than the safe's rating.) They went and unlocked each of the remaining fire-safe filing cabinets, but with the same resultónone of their files had survived. They searched the offices on the outer wall with better results. Their floor was one where the firefighters had been able to spray water in through the windows, so there were salvageable files in those offices. KPMG (the external auditors then as now) had been working on the year-end audit in one of the offices, and they had lost a lot of workpapers to the fire. But, some of their permanent file workpapers were near a window and were spared by the fire. The workpapers had burned edges, but the work on the papers was still legible. These papers were later taped onto new workpaper sheets and placed in the new permanent files for KPMG's audit of Norwest Mortgage.

These women gave me a copy of the "Beal Street Times" (Norwest Mortgage's company newspaper at the time of the fire) that contained pictures of Mortgage's offices after the fire and an article about the impact of the fire to Mortgage. I found in 1998 that I still had this newspaper, so I sent it to your department at that time. I hope you still have it as I recall it had a picture of a melted telephone that was rather telling of the level of heat sustained as a result of the fire.

 

Cathy M., Minneapolis
I started at Northwestern National Bank in June of 1981, so when the fire took place on Thanksgiving Day of 1982, I was still a relatively new employee.
After the fire, our department moved into the Operations Center, lower level #3, known by us as ìThe Pit.î We had desks very quickly, but we had no dividers between the individual desks in a huge open area, so we got to know people we had never met before.

One person I got to know was a Systems Analyst. He started talking to me, we found out we had mutual friends and we started dating. To make a long story short, in August of 1984 we were married.

So I guess you could say that the Thanksgiving Day fire brought us together.

 

Gerry V., Minneapolis
I remember the 1982 Thanksgiving Day fire events well. When I saw the old Donaldsonís Building was on fire on the evening news, I did not think twice, because there was a fire wall between it and the Northwestern Bank Building. Later that evening when the fire came through the top of the Donaldsonís Bldg and into the 6th floor of the bank, things got a bit more complex. Trust was on floors 5, 6 and 7 of the bank and I knew trouble was ahead (my office was on the 5th floor). I went downtown at 10:00 pm Thanksgiving Day night to meet with various Trust personnel to plan for the emergency. We worked all week-end to set up a ìTrust Departmentî on Lower Level 3 of the then new Norwest Operations Center. Lower Level 3 had not ever been occupied and was basically a dusty cement floor with open steel beams on the ceiling. By Monday morning at 8:00 am, we had a desk with pencil and notepad for all trust employees so they had a place to sit and work. We only had one telephone for the whole Trust Dept, however, that morning. It was placed on a small table between Peterís desk (head of the trust dept) and his secretary. No one else had a phone for several days. We ran the trust dept for several months out of these quarters, adding phones in a few key areas as time passed.

 

 

Bill S., Minneapolis
It was one of the those things where everyone just comes together and gets things done. We worked with many other departments from NIS (Norwest Information Services, at that time this was the technology company), Norwest Bank Minneapolis, and our computer hardware vendors. We had recovery plans, but one of our main hurdles was equipment. We needed to gather computer terminals, teller terminals, etc. from our testing facilities, other Norwest Banks in the area, from our vendors, etc. The building where we housed the temporary lobby was the building directly east (across Marquette Ave.), first floor south side along 7th street. The temporary bank lobby was in a long, thin room that had access from both the sidewalk and the inside mall area on the first floor.

We worked the entire weekend to secure the location, install the equipment, modify the software to setup a new bank location, and test the location before the customers were to arrive on Monday morning.

 

 

Linnea P., Minneapolis
I was only 14 years old when the fire happened and not even considering being a team member at the time. I was more interested in getting my driving permit and finishing my freshman year of High School.
As a family tradition for as long as I can remember while my grandparents were alive we would go walk on Nicollet Mall after dinner thanksgiving night to enjoy the windows of Donaldsonís and Daytonís.
So that night we were on our way to downtown from south Minneapolis and when we were getting onto 35W from 46th street we saw the smoke and my dad stated that it looked like there was a fire in downtown. Of course we joked with my grandmother saying her bank was on fire, little did we know at the time.
Once we got downtown we soon discovered that there was fire where the old Donaldsonís store was being torn down and the fire department had not yet arrived to the scene. We stood right across the street from the fire; in fact I got so warm from the heat that I unzipped my jacket a bit. I believe we were standing next to a weather kiosk by Woolworthís and I remember seeing it the next morning on TV covered in ice from all the water being sprayed by the fire department.

At one time we had to move because the police were driving their cars down the sidewalk to get bystanders off the sidewalk where there were underground tanks with some type of possible explosive.

Shortly after being moved by the police we were moved again because the fire was growing so fast, I was running along a sidewalk by the IDS and dodging glass being blown out of the building because the fire was so hot.

I do remember that when we were standing by the weather kiosk that there was ìbag ladyî stating she saw who did it and it was two boys. She then started pointing at two younger boys and yelling, ìThere they are!î Not sure about who she was we moved away from her. Much to our surprise she was right and those were the two boys who had started the fire.

Daniel J. Mruz
I still remember having Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house in N.E. Mpls 2 miles away. My older brother walks in and says the Bank is on fire. I said right, nice try since I just started there. He said no come look out the back door for yourself your can see the flames from here. It was like a candle in the sky. We jumped into the car and drove downtown and they let you get within a block of the fire. We watched it burn for hours from 8th Street and Marquette Avenue. I couldn't beleive we were up and running for business that Monday morning. My office in the Bank building was on the 4th floor and was in perfect condition. You couldn't tell there was even a fire. No smoke or smell or damage of any kind. However 7th floor up were gone.
The next year in the basement of NOC were the most fun years of my career working for Northwestern National Bank as everyone came together in such a unique way from the highest manager to lowest level employee since we physically were all together in one place physically making it happen.

 

Deb, Minneapolis
I was working at Federal Reserve Minneapolis (Nights) when this happened. The heat was so intense you could feel the heat a few blocks away. The night shift keep watch on the fire and all the activities surrounding the blaze.

Deb, Minneapolis