Seattle's Water Pressure Passes the Fire Test
High-pressure water from a new reservoir successfully cleared the skyline in a demonstration for city officials.
A public test of the Spring Hill Water Company's works was given last evening, and exceeded by far the expectations of even the most sanguine. The hose carriage of Engine Company No. 1, at 7 o'clock last evening, was taken to the corner of South Second and Jackson streets, where a fire plug had been placed by the Water Company, and two lines of hose attached, leading to Commercial street. The pumps were not working at the time, and the pressure came from a tank on the top of the hill, some 270 feet above the level of the bay, containing about 400,000 gallons of water. A pressure of 140 pounds was placed on the hose, and two large streams, equal to those from either of the steam fire engines, were thrown from the nozzles. One of these streams was thrown forty feet higher than the flag staff over W. D. Scott & Co.'s building. The water was turned on for fifteen or twenty minutes, and the pressure was not lessened at all during that time. A much greater pressure could have been obtained, but it was feared the hose might give way. Several hundred people congregated about to witness the test, and everyone seemed surprised at the distance the large streams were thrown. With one of these fire plugs on the corner of each block, our city would be comparatively safe from destruction by fire.
“One of these streams was thrown forty feet higher than the flag staff over W. D. Scott & Co.'s building.”
This 1884 infrastructure milestone, leveraging the height of First Hill to fight fires via gravity, marks the transition from bucket brigades to the modern municipal water system. Today, Seattle Public Utilities still manages these historic gravity-fed mains, though the city’s fire risk is now managed by a much more complex high-pressure grid.
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