The Fire Chief’s Plea for Hydrants
Seattle’s fire safety infrastructure lags behind its rapid expansion, leading officials to sound the alarm on neglected districts.
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.
Chief of the Fire Department A. B. Hunt and Commissioners Maas and Foster were at the engine house yesterday afternoon when a Post-Intelligencer reporter asked for opinions on the need for more fire hydrants and alarm boxes in the outlying parts of the city. Chief Hunt stated that the council had been asked for new boxes some time ago, but as yet no decision had been reached. 'It is true,' he said, 'that many more boxes could be located advantageously, but with the circuits and the register now used, electrician Pinckney informs me that five boxes will be all that the apparatus will bear. The suggestion that a box be located near Coffin's Creosote Works in North Seattle, at the foot of Harrison street is good, and it is also true that the hydrants in that section are few.' Commissioner Foster added, 'I believe West street needs several hydrants.' The chief noted that Beacon Hill was in dire need of protection: 'At present an alarm from that section has to be sent from the corner of Ann and Olympic avenues, which is one box for the whole section. It will cost something to make the addition, but it is badly needed.'
“It is true that many more boxes could be located advantageously, but with the circuits and the register now used, fire boxes will be all that the apparatus will bear.”
In 1893, Seattle was grappling with the tension between rapid urban sprawl and the lack of basic municipal infrastructure like fire safety. Today’s debates about 'level of service' and infrastructure gaps in neighborhoods like Ballard or West Seattle are the direct modern descendants of these same early civic growing pains.
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