The Narrow Escape of Aberdeen
A pre-dawn fire in a downtown barber shop threatened to raze the young city, but a swift response from the local hose company stopped the flames before they reached the business district.
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.
About 4 o'clock Wednesday morning, Ed Jones, who works in Fred Redinger's barber shop on Heron street, was called by a gentleman whose wife was sick in a room over the shop, and told that there must be a fire below. Mr. Jones went into the front shop and passed through to the rear. In opening the door leading back, he found the entire rear part of the building in flames. He immediately gave the alarm by crying fire, and in a twinkle, the hose company was in the alley back of Heron street and playing a steady, watery tune on the fast-gathering flames. Nothing but the prompt response of the company saved the entire business part of the city from being completely swept away. The fire was probably caused by a lamp that it has been customary to leave burning for a lodger who has a room in the rear of the shop. The entire rear part of the shop is a charred mass, but the artistic interior of the front part fortunately escaped without being damaged in the slightest degree.
“Nothing but the prompt response of the company saved the entire business part of the city from being completely swept away.”
In 1891, Aberdeen was a timber town built almost entirely of wood, making a single lamp or stove pipe a potential death sentence for the entire downtown core. Today, while the threat of such rapid, city-wide conflagration is mitigated by modern fire codes and construction, the vulnerability of the waterfront and the historic downtown remains a constant reminder of the city's precarious start.
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