Spontaneous Combustion Narrowly Misses Seattle Disaster
A late-night fire at a dry goods store was quelled just in time, highlighting the hidden dangers of combustible materials in the wooden city.
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 1 o'clock last night the loud fire alarm bells aroused our people from their slumbers. The cause of this alarm proved to be a fire in the rear of Simon & Brownstone's dry goods store, on Front street. The two engines and the hook and ladder apparatus were promptly on hand, but before they could be brought into use the flames had been extinguished by a few buckets of water. How the fire started is a mystery, the only reasonable conclusion being spontaneous combustion, as the fire started in a large pile of cotton batting. The floor was burned through, and but for the timely discovery by policeman Manning a terrible conflagration would surely have resulted, as the fire stops are all torn up, so that the engines would be almost useless.
“How the fire started is a mystery, the only reasonable conclusion being spontaneous combustion.”
In 1884, Seattle was a tinderbox of wood-frame buildings where a single pile of cotton could wipe out blocks. While modern fire codes have replaced the 'buckets of water' approach, the fear of fire remains a core element of Seattle's urban identity, rooted in the city's precarious early history.
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