A Miraculous Escape for Seattle
A waterfront fire threatens to consume the business district, but the volunteer fire department saves the day.
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 half past 10 o'clock yesterday morning a general alarm of fire was sounded, and people commenced rushing in every direction from their various places of business looking for the cause. Great volumes of smoke issuing from the rear of Schwabacher Brothers & Co.'s store soon gave the general direction of the fire, and thousands of curious men flocked to the scene. The fire originated in a little warehouse used for the storage of paints, oils, turpentine, dogfish oil, lime, rosin, cement, sulfur and other inflammable material belonging to the firm of Schwabacher Brothers & Co., directly in the rear of Charles McDonald's blacksmith shop. Owing to the inflammable character of the contents, the fire gained great headway and threw out a terrible heat. Owing to the torn condition of the streets, the steam engines were necessarily somewhat delayed in getting into working position at the Washington street slip. Before the first stream was thrown, the warehouse was completely enveloped in flames, and the rear of McDonald's blacksmith shop all on fire. Once, however, both fire companies and the hook and ladder boys got to work, they did wonderful execution. The fire would have been under control in half an hour had not several barrels of the burning oil run down into the bay, converting the whole surface of the water into a great sheet of flame. A light wind blew these along the water under the long warehouse of Schwabacher Brothers & Co., the contents of which took fire the full length of that immense building. About this time the railroad company's steam pump got a stream on the fire. At this time No. 1 had two streams going, No. 2 had one, and the railroad company's engine one. This great volume of salt water played sad havoc with the flames, which were soon thereafter under control. The firemen worked nobly, and in the face of many obstacles succeeded in confining the fiery element in a comparatively limited space. Many citizens turned out and did good work in saving property. The only building entirely destroyed was the warehouse in which the fire first originated. Taking the whole matter into consideration, the city sustained almost a miraculous escape, thanks to our volunteer fire department.
“The fire would have been under control in half an hour had not several barrels of the burning oil run down into the bay, converting the whole surface of the water into a great sheet of flame.”
This 1884 blaze on the waterfront highlights how fragile Seattle’s wooden infrastructure was before the Great Fire of 1889. The reliance on the 'Washington street slip' and volunteer fire companies shows a city struggling to manage urban growth while sitting on a tinderbox.
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