Post Office Inferno Narrowly Avoided
A quick-thinking resident discovers a fire smoldering under the post office stove, saving the block from total destruction.
This city had a very close call to a fire Saturday night. At about 10 o'clock, the smell of smoke attracted the attention of the inmates of the post office block, and on investigation, they discovered the storeroom of Eshelman Bros. filled with smoke. Mr. E. R. Robertson, who was one of the first to arrive, promptly broke open the front door and made his way through the dense smoke back to the post office, where it was found the fire had started under the stove. The flames had already burned a hole through the floor nearly large enough to let the stove through, and the fire had just started in a pile of waste paper. By energetic action and the use of a bucket of water, the fire was checked. A few minutes later, the whole post office would have been in flames. Great credit is due to the promptness and efficiency of the fire department; it was only five minutes from the moment of the first alarm until they were at the nearest cistern with sixty-one pounds of steam on.
“A few minutes later the whole postoffice would have been in flames.”
Fire was the greatest existential threat to early Yakima’s rapid wooden construction. Today’s concerns over urban density and fire safety have evolved into more complex battles over building codes and insurance, yet the community’s reliance on rapid response to preserve the commercial core remains a shared civic anxiety.
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