LACKAWANNA, N.Y. — It's tough to forget a day like Nov. 9, 2016, for people in and around the Lackawanna community.

Lackawanna Fire Chief James Fino remembers it all too well. Around 7:30 that morning, they got the call of a fire at the former Bethlehem Steel plant. 

"When I first turned onto Ridge Road coming here, I could see the smoke, immediately called for a second alarm," Fino said. "Massive. Never seen as much fire. The building was huge. The fire load inside the building was huge."

The heat was intense. The smoke could be seen for miles. Fino was a captain at the time, charged with helping coordinate the effort to battle the towering inferno.

"We realized it was bigger than what we could handle," he said. 

More than 100 firefighters from Lackawanna, Buffalo and other departments worked tirelessly to put out the fire.

"We had crews initially around the clock, I believe, it was until we had the fire under control," Fino said.

It took more than 10 days before the flames were extinguished. A total of 300 people from the nearby Bethlehem Park neighborhood were evacuated. Fino says their plan to attack the fire and helpful winds from the north kept it away from the homes, and none were lost.

"We were able to put the fire out with no loss of life and no damage to residential neighborhood right next door," he said.

As Fino looks back at the remnants of what was once Bethlehem Steel, he still marvels at the massive scale of the fire itself, and the resources required to knock it down. 

"Once-in-a-lifetime fire, especially for a small department like Lackawanna. To have a fire that size and that magnitude was pretty spectacular," he said.

As for the future of the land where the Bethlehem Steel fire happened, Great Lakes Industrial Development has been approved to place a nine-acre solar array on the site.