Hotel Stine Reduced to Ashes in Walla Walla
A faulty fire response and a quick-moving blaze gutted a landmark hotel in the heart of downtown, leaving guests fleeing for safety.
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.
At 9:30 tonight fire broke out in a frame building on Main street occupied by a French restaurant in Walla Walla. The fire department responded promptly, but owing to some difficulty the engines failed to raise steam, and it was fully ten minutes before water was secured. The flames shot high in the air, and the fire soon communicated to the third story window of the Hotel Stine. Fire spread through the hotel, and in a short space of time the entire building was a mass of flames. The hotel was occupied by a large number of guests, but all escaped without serious injury. A chambermaid suffocated by smoke was carried out to a place of safety and soon revived. Charles Parris, proprietor of the French restaurant, had his hands and face badly burned. Mrs. Alder, conducting a knitting factory a few doors below the restaurant, became hysterical from fright and is now in precarious condition. Fred Stine, the owner of the brick building, places his loss at $30,000.
“The fire department responded promptly, but owing to some difficulty the engines failed to raise steam, and it was fully ten minutes before water was secured.”
Fires in dense, wood-frame downtown districts were common nightmares in the late 19th century, often exacerbated by the very equipment meant to stop them. Today, Walla Walla’s historic downtown relies on modern fire codes and building inspections to prevent the kind of total loss experienced by the Hotel Stine in 1892.
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