The former captain of the Albury Civic Fire Brigade had his men by his side in 1982, as they barged in to tackle the blaze.

Crews expected to come across shelves, lined with pages of stories succumbing to the heat and flames. Little did they know there was much more lurking behind the doors of the Mate Street Book Exchange.

“The guy used a phone to set the fire going … you'd open a door and trip the wire, a rattrap bomb would go boom,” Mr Byrnes said.

"He had pipe bombs, loaded backwards rattraps and trip wires right throughout the building … we had to call the army in because it was that dangerous.”

Mr Byrnes said the “bookshop of horrors” would have been one of the worst call-outs in the 100 years of Albury Civic Fire Station. 

A celebration of the centenary of the Kiewa Street building will be held at the station from 5pm Tuesday.

Shortly after the new station was built in August 1916, Albury received its first “motor fire engine” to replace the “horse drawn turbine motor engine” The Border Mail reported.

Mr Byrnes reflected on his 41-years with the brigade, which was captained by Barry Gerrard before him.

He spoke of grass fires, cats in trees and children with their heads through grates as he sat alongside his former deputy, who is the present captain, John Vandeven. 

Mr Vandeven said, in the early days, fires were fought much differently.

“For water, they had people on call and the first bloke who got there with the water got paid - everyone else missed out,” he said.

“He'd get one quid.”

Things slowly progressed and, by the time Mr Byrnes joined in 1963, he'd head out to blazes on the Dennis fire engine.

A crew adorned with brass helmets would jump on the back of the truck.

They wore belts, which supported an axe and a screwdriver. Their thick coats had no seam at the bottom, allowing the water to run out if they got wet.

Mr Byrnes said there was no breathing apparatus, they simply “had to eat smoke”.

“We would respond on our push bikes in those days,” Mr Byrnes said.

“My first experience when I first joined the fire brigade, I was sitting at home and the bells went off … I jumped on my pushbike, rushed to the station and what do you know - I missed the fire engine.

“I put on all my gear and hopped on my bike and rode madly up Monument Hill.

“By the time I got there the fire was out and I had a nose bleed.”

Mr Byrnes said beaters were one of the methods initially used on grass fires.

“We had a piece of hose cut off and nailed to a stick – we'd beat the fire out,” he said.

“That's how crude it was when I joined.”

Mr Byrnes and Mr Vandeven could list almost every significant building destroyed by flames in the city since the 60s.

Albury Civic battled a blaze in 1994 at the Ritz nightclub, now the Bended Elbow, and rescued people at the 1992 Globe Hotel fire, on the corner of Kiewa and Dean streets.

Mr Byrnes said he also battled the fruit market blaze on Olive Street with his men.

“That was a horrific fire,” he said.

“The small amount of water we had in those days, we carried about 500 or so gallons on the Dennis - it lasted about four minutes.”

Crews also had a close call in the 70s during a fire at the old Hoyts cinema, now Chemist Warehouse.

“When it went up we were on the roof, you can imagine the steel around the inside of the roof expanded and when the water hit it, it contracted,” Mr Byrnes said. 

“There was a bit of movement and, of course, we'd just got off the roof when it came down.

“One of our firies was inside and he got blown out the door, but he survived.”

Albury Civic Fire Station closed briefly in 1983, after paid firefighters became stationed at the new Mate Street station.

Mr Vandeven said uproar from the community and Albury Council led to the station re-opening a short time later.

Th only major changes at the site was when a shed at the rear was built in 1943, extensions to the rear 1951, a verandah added in 1962-63 followed by alterations and renovations 1965.

“The building is perfect,” Mr Vandeven said.

“They have tidied it, painted it and fixed a few things, but it's exactly how it was.”

A more modern disaster took place in 2005 when flames ravaged a 123-year-old landmark – the Terminus Hotel.

The incident caused more than $3 million damage and seven residents escaped the blaze unhurt.

Brigades from Mate Street and Albury Civic showed, sending two search and rescue teams inside in pairs. 

“Two came out and had saved a cat, but the other two were trapped upstairs,” Mr Vandeven said.

“We had to put ladder to the window.

“One guy got out, but the roof collapsed on the second guy hitting is helmet and shoulder - he got out just in time.”

Mr Vandeven said a fire at the Country Comfort reinforced the importance of modern alarm systems.

The 1998 blaze broke out in a bin inside a room on the third floor and quickly spread up Albury’s tallest building.

“It caught hold of curtains and spread outside,” Mr Vandeven said.

“They didn’t have fire alarms or anything in those days.

“People now are alerted to fires.” 

Both men agreed smoke alarms and improvements to training, fire gear and equipment had brought the service a long way – and saved many lives.

Albury Civic has never lost a member, but Mr Byrnes said they did come close during a butcher fire on David Street.

“We go in afterwards and all of a sudden one of our firies went missing,” he said.

“We looked everywhere for him and noticed a few bubbles coming up from a big excavation beneath the building.

“Sure enough, there he was down there, under all the water we had put on this fire.

“So, we fished him out.

“That was the closest we came to losing a man.”