The Price of Fire Safety in a Growing City
A look back at Seattle's seven-year evolution from a fire-prone settlement to a city investing heavily in steam engines and professional gear.
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.
Up to 1876, Seattle was without anything in the shape of a fire engine or other appliance for successfully settling with the fiery element. During that year a fire occurred in Freeman's variety and second hand store, on Commercial street, and the people then for the first time realized their helpless condition. Since then, in seven and one-half years, Seattle has expended over $38,000 in appliances for protecting the city from the flames, and for this she has two lots, one brick engine house, two steam fire engines, one hand engine, several hose carriages, a hook and ladder apparatus, and thousands of feet of rubber hose. There are of course some things that might be improved on, but taking it as a whole, the above showing is very satisfactory, and lays far over places of more pretension and more population than Seattle.
“Up to 1876, Seattle was without anything in the shape of a fire engine or other appliance for successfully settling with the fiery element.”
Public safety investment in Seattle has always been reactive to tragedy, specifically fire. Just as 1870s Seattle had to scramble to build an engine house after a devastating blaze, modern Seattle faces similar pressures to upgrade infrastructure and staffing in response to contemporary urban crises.
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