A Close Call on the Hill

Forewarned, forearmed is an old maxim of admitted soundness. It has long been a matter of wonder to old residents of Puget Sound that an almost entirely wooden, close-built town like Seattle should have existed for so many years without any fires worth mentioning. Warnings have multiplied within the past two or three years. Alarms have been frequent, but there has not been a clean sweep of more than a shanty within the city limits since the Indian attack, twenty-one years ago, until the holocaust on the hill last Wednesday night. The city can felicitate itself on a lucky escape on that occasion. But for the fact of its occurring in the dampest of the rainy season, that a mist was falling at the time, and no wind blowing, and that the building stood almost alone in the block, it is incredible that the city could have escaped a widespread conflagration. Though it was a slow and toilsome task for the unpracticed fire brigade to drag the heavy engine up the steep and unpaved ascent, yet the fire could then have been put out had there been an adequate supply of water at hand. But in this respect, our great and overgrown town is deficient. In the greater exigencies of this kind, to which we are liable in the future, we must have a better public supply of water, better graded and paved streets, and another engine or two.