A Close Call on Washington Street
A carpenter’s spilled lamp sets a roof ablaze, only for an alert officer to stop the fire with a well-aimed kick.
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.
The two-story brick building on Washington Street in which James Murphy killed Phil Dane, and the wooden and tent structure adjoining, on South Third and Washington streets, had a narrow escape from fire last night at 9 o'clock. A carpenter who was working on a bay window in the second story of the brick block upset a lamp and then tried to smother the flames with his coat. The oil saturated the coat, which also caught fire, and he threw the burning mass out of the window. It landed on the canvas roof of the wooden building and set fire to it. Officer Powers was on hand, and after getting a ladder, reached the roof and kicked coat and lamp into the street. Buckets of water were then passed up to him and he put out the fire without being obliged to call out the department.
“Officer Powers was on hand, and after getting a ladder, reached the roof and kicked coat and lamp into the street.”
This incident occurred in the Pioneer Square area, a district that has faced repeated fires and rebuilds throughout Seattle's history. It is a vivid reminder of the city's early reliance on individual heroics before modern fire suppression systems became ubiquitous.
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