Creps United Publications: Fire Kindles Insert Printer's Spirit to Rebuild

Actually, since the weather had been so gorgeous, a number of the doors were wide open. "Once the negative air pressure caught that, it just took the fire clear through the building," Howard Creps recalls. Within 5-7 minutes, the facility was fully involved.

Miraculously, none of the 50 employees on the floor at the time of the fire were injured. But it took a dozen fire departments from three Pennsylvania counties roughly five hours to extinguish the blaze, which filled the skies with black smoke so dense and billowing that it could be seen for miles. Walls and ceilings buckled under the intense heat, which one firefighter said eclipsed the 1,200-degree mark at the roof.