Walla Walla's Year of Fire
The local fire department reports a record-breaking 104 alarms for the year, including three major blazes that leveled local businesses.
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.
During the past year, the Walla Walla fire department answered 104 fire alarms, 26 of them being still alarms and 78 general. This is the biggest record since the organization of a fire department in Walla Walla. There were three big fires during the year. The first was on August 22, when the interior of the Athletic Club on Alder Street was completely destroyed, entailing a loss of $4,500. The second was the burning of the Walla Walla Mattress Company's plant on Alder Street, with an insurance loss of $7,000. The third and the largest of the year was the Whitehouse-Crimmins company mill fire, which occurred October 11. The total loss at this fire was $75,000.
“This is the biggest record since the organization of a fire department in Walla Walla.”
Early 20th-century fire records highlight how vulnerable wood-frame industrial districts were before modern fire codes. Today, these sites near Alder Street have been largely transformed from manufacturing hubs into parts of the modern downtown core, though the fear of catastrophic urban fire remains a central civic concern.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.