A Near Miss for Kennewick’s Warehouse District
A passing locomotive sparked a blaze in the sagebrush that nearly razed the town's lumber yards and warehouses.
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.
Watson Bros.' new warehouse had a close call to being burned out last night. The sagebrush that had been scattered over the approaches ignited from a passing locomotive. The fire was seen by Mr. F. L. Watson's daughter from their window and they at once aroused their father, who ran up to the building and threw sand on the fire that was burning nearest the building. He then hurried across to the Antlers Hotel and aroused his brother, F. H. Watson, and Landlord Keefer. These three men and W. J. Duncan, who came across from his residence, succeeded in putting out the fire with sand and also with water from the nearest flume, which they carried over in a tub. The wind was blowing from the south, which aided them very much. Had the wind been blowing from the west, a conflagration would have resulted which would probably have taken all the buildings just north of the tracks, including the two lumber yards, the Moore warehouse, and some of the nearby residences. Fortune favored Kennewick for once, surely.
“Fortune favored Kennewick for once, surely.”
This near-disaster highlights the extreme fire vulnerability of early 20th-century boomtowns built rapidly near rail lines. Today, while steel and concrete have replaced much of the early flammable infrastructure, the threat of brushfires driven by wind remains a significant concern for the high-desert landscapes surrounding the Tri-Cities.
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