The Great Telephone Switchboard Fire

A tangling up of the telephone, electric light and police patrol wires on Wednesday night and early yesterday morning caused a dangerous fire in the central telephone office, which paralyzed part of the system and was only prevented by prompt action from destroying the whole central plant. It also knocked out four patrol boxes and gave several persons such a shock that they wondered what struck them. The trouble began on Wednesday evening when the Union Electric Company's arc light wire and the police patrol wire became crossed on Seventh, between Pike and Pine streets. The arc current played the very mischief with the distributing board and was not slow to set fire to the paraffine-soaked insulation and to burn off ten of the cables, each carrying fifty phone wires. As the flames seized the inflammable insulation, they hissed up to the ceiling. W. H. Johnson, the switchboard man, came on the scene in a lucky moment and carried water from the sink in the hall, with which the operators put out the fire, unaided by the firemen. Water is used in such cases only as a last resort, as it hopelessly damages the wires.