Guided by History continues a week-long memoir of the "Great Thanksgiving Fire" of 1982. The fire destroyed a block of downtown Minneapolis, including the Northwestern National Bank Building. NWB was an icon in the region to thousands of employees, customers and neighbors. (Read Part 1 and Part 2.)
Diane Lilly, Government Relations Manager for Wells Fargo in Minneapolis, worked for Northwestern National Bancorporation at the time of the fire. She stopped by my desk the other day to talk about what she remembers about the blaze.
Home on Thanksgiving Day, Diane heard there was a fire downtown. She turned the radio on to discover that it was Northwestern National Bank. A few days later, in hip boots and lighted helmet, Diane toured the 12th floor—the most devastated area. Everything was destroyed; even her telephone had melted away.
Diane learned one difficult lesson: Never leave anything of value at work. The day before Thanksgiving she brought an heirloom pearl necklace to work to have restrung, and it, too, was gone. Looking in the nearly knee-high muck, she managed to find just one pearl.
The hardest thing to live without was a contact list—it was impossible to call people. With no office computers for backup, all information was lost. Although it was possible to continue to work, it wasn't back to normal right away, something people not affected by the fire were quick to expect. But something that unsettling stays with you for a long time.
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