Fighting Fire! Read online

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  To my New York friends Russell and Jim who have always been so supportive

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Introduction

  1 COLONIAL AMERICA’S BIGGEST FIRE

  BOSTON, 1760

  2 A TERRIBLE TORRENT OF FIRE

  NEW YORK, 1835

  3 AMERICA’S MOST FAMOUS FIRE

  CHICAGO, 1871

  4 NEW CENTURY, OLD PROBLEM

  BALTIMORE, 1904

  5 FIRE ON THE WATER

  NEW YORK, 1904

  6 AMERICA’S LAST GREAT URBAN FIRE

  SAN FRANCISCO, 1906

  7 DEADLY WORKPLACE FIRE

  NEW YORK, 1911

  8 NIGHTCLUB TRAGEDY

  BOSTON, 1942

  9 9/11: FIRE IN THE SKY

  NEW YORK, 2001

  10 WILDFIRE

  SAN DIEGO COUNTY, 2007

  Fire Engines in American History

  Fire Museums to Visit

  Recommended Reading

  Websites to Visit

  Source Notes

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Index

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  A “dreadful city of fire” is how one visitor described colonial Boston. That’s because fires frequently destroyed large sections of the city.

  But it wasn’t a problem only in Boston or in the colonial era. Major fires regularly leveled cities up until the early twentieth century.

  Several of these fires shaped history. King George’s indifference to the suffering of Boston’s citizens after the big fire of 1760, some historians believe, added to the tensions that sparked the American Revolution. New York City’s Great Fire of 1835 prompted the building of the Croton Aqueduct, one of the nineteenth century’s grandest engineering feats. And the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 cleared the way for a new style of architecture that reshaped skylines around the world—the skyscraper.

  Many smaller American fires were no less significant in terms of developing firefighting and fire-safety techniques. In the early twentieth century, a fire aboard the General Slocum, a popular excursion boat in New York City, killed 1,021 people. A few months later in the same city, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire killed 146 young garment workers. Big or small, each fire resulted in innovations as well as stronger laws and regulations. Science and technology improved fire protection, fire detection, and firefighting.

  Despite these advances, fire is still a major threat. According to the National Fire Protection Association, U.S. fire departments responded to nearly 1.3 million fires in 2010. That’s one every 24 seconds. Those fires caused $11.6 billion in damage and killed 3,125 people, not including firefighters.

  Even with today’s technology, tragedies still occur. In late June 2013, a wildfire in central Arizona trapped and killed an elite group of 19 firefighters. Two months later, the Rim Fire, one of California’s biggest wildfires, burned more than 370 square miles of land, including a large portion of Yosemite National Park. It took some 1,500 firefighters about five weeks to fully contain the blaze.

  The following chapters show the destructive nature of fire through ten of the deadliest fires in American history. The challenges of firefighting have changed as our country has grown and modernized, but over the centuries these major fires have taught us valuable lessons that help prevent fires and save lives.

  1

  COLONIAL AMERICA’S BIGGEST FIRE

  BOSTON, 1760

  In the days of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, big fires regularly destroyed towns and cities, but no city burned more than Boston.

  Between Boston’s founding in 1630 and the start of the American Revolution in 1775, fires regularly devastated large sections of the city. It’s not hard to see why. The Puritans who settled on Boston’s hilly Shawmut Peninsula used wood from nearby forests to build practically everything—houses, churches, and shops. They even used it to make chimneys. And the colonists cooked meals and heated their homes with open fireplaces full of wood crackling and popping. At night, candles and oil lamps provided light.

  Colonial Boston had its first recorded fire in 1631, when a chimney caught fire and burned a house down. Soon afterward the colonies had their first fire code: “noe man shall build his chimney with wood, nor cover his house with thatch.” New regulations followed each big fire. Boston’s Board of Selectmen, which was like a city council, required residents to clean their chimneys regularly. The selectmen also decreed that “no dwelling house in Boston shall be erected and set up except of stone or brick and covered with slate or tyle.”

  In 1678, the selectmen purchased the latest firefighting equipment, an English-made “hand tub fire engine.” At the time the word engine simply meant a tool or instrument. It was a rectangular wooden vessel with a pump, a short leather hose, and handles on each side for carrying. During a fire, a line of men, women, and children, which was called a bucket brigade, drew buckets of water from a creek or well and passed them to firefighters to fill the engine. Several men pumped the engine while one held the hose, which spurted water 15 to 20 feet.

  One of the first fire engines used in North America. [LOC, USZ62-99616]

  The selectmen chose a dozen men to operate the engine. The man in charge was called the engineer. They were paid for each fire they fought, which gives Boston its claim to having had America’s first paid firefighters.

  Some twenty Bostonians in 1718 organized a mutual fire society, pledging to help one another if a fire started in their homes or shops. The rules required that “each Member confidently keep together in good Order in his Dwelling House, Two Leather Buckets, a Bed Winch, and two Bags.” During a fire, the society’s members filled their bags with dishes, clothing, and other small items. With the winches, they dismantled beds, often a family’s most valuable possessions.

  Benjamin Franklin organized the first volunteer firefighting company. [LOC, USZ62-45191]

  Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, and at age five he witnessed the Great Fire of 1711, which destroyed some one hundred buildings in the center of town. In 1736, as an adult living in Philadelphia, Franklin helped to organize America’s first volunteer fire company, the Union Fire Company. Franklin’s firefighters were “Brave men, men of Spirit and Humanity, good Citizens or Neighbours, capable and worthy of civil society, and the Enjoyment of a happy Government.” Boston and other colonial cities soon organized their own volunteer fire companies.

  As in Philadelphia, Boston’s volunteers included the town’s leading citizens. “It is of some Importance in Boston,” noted John Adams, America’s second president, “to belong to a Fire Clubb and to choose and get admitted to a good one.” Many Bostonians who distinguished themselves in the American Revolution, such as Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Paul Revere, were volunteer firefighters.

  Boston also organized nighttime street patrols or fire watches. This practice dated back to ancient Rome, when men on night patrol were called “vigils” because they were vigilant, or watchful. Time is of the essence when fighting a fire. By discovering a blaze quickly, alerting residents, and summoning firefighters, vigilant patrols saved property and lives.

  In the spring of 1760, Boston’s population of fifteen thousand people made it the third-largest city in the colonies. In addition to its building codes, mutual societies, and night watchmen, the city had nine
fire engines and about one hundred volunteer firefighters. The city appeared prepared but wasn’t.

  This eighteenth-century print depicts a bucket brigade filling an engine with water. [LOC, DIG-ppmsca-01574]

  The regulations requiring that dwellings and shops be built of brick or stone had never been strictly enforced. Many buildings along the narrow, winding streets in the oldest part of Boston were wood. In fact, wood was everywhere. Stacks of logs for heating and cooking sat beside every house and shop. Plus, bakers, blacksmiths, brewers, coopers, and tanners kept piles of logs for their ovens and furnaces.

  Little rain had fallen for several weeks, so all of this combustible material was especially dry. Making conditions worse, a strong March wind blew across the peninsula.

  At 3:00 A.M. on Thursday, March 20, a watchman saw flames in the Brazen Head Tavern and Inn on Pudding Lane in Cornhill, a neighborhood between the Boston Common and the harbor. The fire probably started when embers popped out of the inn’s fireplace. Summoned by church bells, firefighters carrying ladders and buckets and pulling engines, which were now on wheels, ran to Pudding Lane. Unable to save the Brazen Head, the men tried to stop the fire from spreading.

  In 1775, George Washington gave this engine to the new Friendship Fire Company of Alexandria, Virginia. [LOC, USZ62-12289]

  The firefighters threw water on neighboring buildings and used their hooks and chains to pull down several shops and homes to create a firebreak. A firebreak is an open space cleared as much as possible of flammable material. The demolished buildings also made it easier for firefighters to soak the rubble and extinguish firebrands as these airborne embers landed. But that night, nothing worked.

  A sailor from Nova Scotia named David Perry described the scene in his journal: “While we were here the town took fire in the night … the wind in the north-west and pretty high; and in spite of all we could do with the engines, &c. it spread a great way down King’s Street, and went across and laid all that part of the town in ashes, down to Fort Hill. We attended through the whole, and assisted in carrying water to the engines.”

  The inferno lit up the sky. People sixty miles north of Boston reported seeing the red glow. By dawn, the fire was “a perfect torrent of flame,” recalled Bostonian William Cooper. “It is not easy to describe the Terror of that Fatal morning.… The distressed Inhabitants of those Buildings wrapped in Fire scarce knew where to take refuge.”

  At the harbor, about half a mile from where it started, the fire burned Hallowell’s Shipyard and Wendell’s Wharf, where a storehouse full of gunpowder exploded. The blaze destroyed one sailing ship and damaged nine others before burning out at the water’s edge.

  Surprisingly, no one died. “In the midst of our Distress we have great cause for Thanksgiving,” Cooper wrote, “that not withstanding the rage of the fire, the explosion at the Small Battery, and the falling of the walls, and chimneys, Divine Providence, who so mercifully ordered it, not one life has been lost and few wounded.”

  But the rest of the news wasn’t good. The “Great Fire of 1760” was the worst fire of the colonial era. In ten hours, the fire had destroyed 349 buildings, mostly in the South End. Because of the wind’s direction, the Meeting House was spared. Many protests a few years later against British policies, such as the Boston Tea Party, began at the Old South Meeting House.

  The Old South Meeting House survived the fire of 1760 and an even larger fire in 1872. [Boston Public Library]

  Prominent Bostonians offered explanations for the fire that might seem odd to reasonable people today but were widely believed then. The Reverend Jonathan Mayhew, the man later credited with coining the phrase “no taxation without representation,” gave his “Sermon Occasioned by the Great Fire” at Old West Church on Cambridge Street. Mayhew told his congregation:

  But it seems that God, who had spared us before beyond our hopes, was now determined to let loose his wrath upon us, to rebuke us in his anger, and chasten us in his hot displeasure.… Soon after the fire broke out, he caused his wind to blow; and suddenly raised it to such a height, that all endeavors to put a stop to the raging flames, were ineffectual.

  Why was God angry? Because Bostonians were skipping church and “profaning” the Sabbath by working.

  Paul Revere’s print eight years after the Great Fire shows British ships of war arriving in Boston Harbor. [LOC, USZ62-134241]

  Despite believing that mortal men couldn’t prevent destructive fires, the selectmen became tougher about enforcing building codes—especially the ones requiring that new houses and shops be made of brick or stone, with tile or slate roofs. The city widened and straightened narrow streets that would act as firebreaks and give firefighters more room to maneuver. It also bought more ladders and dug new wells.

  But these improvements did little to help the Great Fire’s victims. The blaze had destroyed the wooden tenements of free African Americans and the brick homes of wealthy merchants. Once-prosperous families were penniless and homeless. Carpenters, coopers, and coppersmiths had lost their tools and couldn’t earn a living. Fire insurance, which would have helped them replace their property, wasn’t common at that time. Other colonies and merchants in England sent money and goods, but not enough.

  Boston’s selectmen wrote a letter to King George and to Parliament in London, asking “most humbly … to take their calamities case into their compassionate consideration, and grant them such relief as to the great wisdom and goodness of this Honorable House shall deem proper.” Two years later, the selectmen received a reply. The letter simply stated their request had been received, but no aid was offered.

  Some historians have wondered if the Great Fire of 1760 added to the grievances that led to the American Revolution. Already frustrated by Parliament’s and the king’s indifference to their plight, Bostonians grew angrier when Britain imposed the Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, and other new taxes. Their resentment led to a revolution, which began on April 19, 1775, at the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

  2

  A TERRIBLE TORRENT OF FIRE

  NEW YORK, 1835

  “How shall I record the events of last night, or how to attempt to describe the most awful calamity which has ever visited the United States?” former New York mayor Phillip Hone wrote after his city’s big fire the week before Christmas. “I am fatigued in body, disturbed in mind, and my fancy filled with images of horror which my pen is inadequate to describe.”

  The weather, as people in Boston knew all too well, often plays an important role in major fires. It’s hard to imagine a worse time for a fire than December 16 and 17, 1835. “The night was bitterly cold—seventeen degrees below zero,” an eyewitness named William Callender wrote, “and the wind blew a hurricane.”

  At about 9:00 P.M. that Friday, William Hayes, a watchman patrolling the streets of lower Manhattan, smelled smoke. He summoned other watchmen and they traced the smoke to the five-story Comstock & Adams hardware store on Merchant Street, near where the East River meets New York Harbor.

  “We managed to force open the door,” Hayes said later. “We found the whole interior of the building in flames from cellar to roof and I can tell you we shut that door mighty quick. Almost immediately the flames broke through the roof. It was the most awful night I ever saw.”

  That building was in the wholesale dry goods and hardware district, where merchants who supplied shops in New York and other cities stored merchandise such as tea, coffee, dresses, lace, hats, and lead. The district’s six- and seven-story brick warehouses had iron shutters on the windows to keep out thieves. And they had copper roofs, which wouldn’t catch fire if firebrands from a nearby burning building landed on them. This night would test just how well those safeguards worked.

  This print shows firemen in the nineteenth century pulling an engine to a fire. [LOC, USZC4-6029]

  A watchman alerted the fire sentinel stationed in the cupola atop City Hall. The sentinel rang a big iron bell to summon volunteer firefighters. He s
ignaled the burning building’s location by the number of peals and by hanging a lantern on the side of the cupola facing the fire. Church bells and fire-bell towers across the city repeated the alarm.

  New York City, occupying just lower Manhattan Island at that time, had a population of 300,000 people. After the Erie Canal opened in 1825, New York had become the center of American commerce and business. Its 98-year-old volunteer fire department was one of the country’s biggest and best trained. Unlike Philadelphia’s and Boston’s blue-blooded firefighters, New York’s fifteen hundred volunteers weren’t prominent citizens, but working-class men. They served under full-time fire chief “Handsome Jim” Gulick.

  The department’s equipment included 49 water-pump engines, called pumpers, with names such as Eagle 13, Oceanus, Black Joke, Old Honey Bee, and Lady Washington. The pump engine was a recent innovation. It didn’t need to be filled by buckets of water. The pump had a suction hose to draw water from a well, cistern, or other source. The department also had five hose carts and six hook and ladder carts. Responding to fires, the men pulled their carts and dashed through the streets at breakneck speeds.

  Volunteer firefighters, unlike today’s professionals, didn’t sleep at their firehouses. When an alarm sounded, they had to run to their stations and grab their equipment. It took the first company, Engine No. 1, ten minutes to reach Merchant Street.

  Iron fire tower in nineteenth-century New York City. [LOC, USZ62-73758]

  Wells provided New York’s water, but that night they were frozen solid. The firefighters had to chop holes in the ice covering the East River. Then they connected hoses from pumper to pumper. Black Joke Engine Company No. 33 drew water from the river and pumped it to Chatham Engine Company No. 2, which pumped it to Engine Company No. 13, nearly four hundred feet from the river. But before the water reached the nozzleman at the end of the hose, it turned to icy slush. Without water, the firefighters could do little and the fire quickly spread.