The new Franklin Street fire station opened at the site of the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. fire in Worcester, Mass., where six firefighters died on Dec. 3, 1999. According to the Telegram & Gazette, the new $8 million, 15,000-square-foot station will replace the Brown Square station at Plantation and Franklin streets, which is closing, and the Central Street station, which already closed. The station will house 68 firefighters.

“This is a great tribute; this is a new beginning,” Frank Raffa, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters' Local 1009, told the paper.

The ceremony included remembrances of the fallen firefighters and acknowledgement of the political will it took to get state funding for the project. The three mayors who have served the city since the fire attended, along with city councilors and most of the city’s statehouse delegation. Among those at the ribbon cutting for the fire station were Casey and Dan Spencer, children of fallen fire Lt. Thomas E. Spencer; Michelle Lucey, widow of fallen firefighter Jeremiah M. Lucey; Denise Brotherton, widow of fallen firefighter Paul A. Brotherton, and three of their six sons, Steven, Jonathan and Michael.

“We can never say their names often enough,” Mayor Konstantina B. Lukes said at the ceremony, referring to firefighters Brotherton, Lucey and Joseph T. McGuirk, and Lts. Timothy P. Jackson Sr., Spencer and James F. Lyons III, the six firefighters killed in the fire. She also said that the site will always be considered hallowed and sacred ground.