A Lamp Explosion on Second Street
A mother survives a harrowing escape from a late-night house fire that threatened the entire neighborhood.
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.
Friday night, about 11:30 o'clock, the alarm of fire went ringing through the streets. The fire department answered the alarm almost instantly and found the house of Charles Ecstadt, on Second Street, near H, in flames. By a quarter of twelve the fire was out. The house was very close to one belonging to Charles Beardsley, and only the promptness and efficiency of the fire department prevented a general conflagration in this thickly populated part of town. It is supposed an oil lamp in one of the front rooms exploded. Mrs. Ecstadt, who had been up with a sick child and left the lamp burning, was waked by the heat. She barely had time to save her three children; she was badly burned on the hands and arms during the escape. The loss on the house and furniture was fairly well covered by insurance, being $400 in all.
“When she was waked by the heat of the fire, she barely had time to save her three children.”
Fire was a constant, existential threat to Aberdeen’s early timber-built neighborhoods. Today, while building codes have evolved, the precarious nature of affordable housing remains a recurring theme in the city's history.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.