Mother Rescues Four Children from Raging Clear Lake House Fire
A local mother successfully navigates a burning home to save her children, sustaining painful burns in the process.
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.
CLEAR LAKE, Jan. 29.—At the risk of her own life, Mrs. G. W. Cheney, wife of the principal of the public school here, saved four of her children from death by fire and in the rescue received some painful but not serious burns about the head and arms. She was putting the children to bed when she noticed a tongue of flame darting out from the floor of the second story of the residence. Making a hurried investigation she found much of the entire house afire. Following her attempts to save her children the fire gained rapid progress. Fighting her way through the flames she rescued the last child just in time and from the yard witnessed the total destruction of her home. Mr. Cheney, her husband, was not at home at the time, and Mrs. Cheney made a heroic and successful struggle in the battle against the flames which threatened her children.
“Fighting her way through the flames she rescued the last child just in time and from the yard witnessed the total destruction of her home.”
Residential fires were a constant, terrifying reality in wooden frontier towns like Clear Lake. Today, fire safety codes and modern building materials have drastically reduced the frequency of such total losses, though the vulnerability of households remains a timeless civic concern.
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