Firefighters, assemble! A Puyallup Valley inferno threatens the bridge
Citizens and volunteers rush to save a critical bridge in the Puyallup valley as wildfires ravage timberlands.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A big fire is raging in the Puyallup valley about four miles from this city. Yesterday afternoon the bridge across one of the forks of the river about four miles distant from the city was threatened with destruction by fire. Word was sent to Puyallup and a number of her citizens with buckets, went to the scene and succeeded in putting out the fire in the vicinity of the bridge, thus saving it from destruction. Near our borders there is another big fire and vast quantities of timber are disappearing.
“Word was sent to Puyallup and a number of her citizens with buckets, went to the scene and succeeded in putting out the fire in the vicinity of the bridge.”
In 1887, wildfire threats were a communal, bucket-brigade affair focused on protecting infrastructure like bridges. Today, the scale of wildfires and the urban-wildland interface in Western Washington have turned localized timber loss into a massive, regional emergency management challenge.
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