During the early evening hours of December 11, 1995, a fire broke out in a textile null in Lawrence, Massachusetts. By morning, the. fire had destroyed most of Maiden Mills, the manufacturer of Polartec fabric. The fire seemed a disaster to the company, its employees, its customers, and the surrounding communities. Maiden Mills was a family-owned business, founded in 1906 and run by the founder's grandson Aaron Feuerstein Polartec is a high-quality fabric well known for the outdoor apparel featured by such popular compa¬nies as L.L. Bean, Land's End, REI, J. Crew, and Eddie Bauer. As the major supplier of Polartec, the company had sales of $400 million in the year leading up to the fire. The disaster promised many headaches for Maiden Mills, for its employees, for the numerous businesses that depend on its products, and for an entire community.