Firefighter Injured in High-Angle Practice Drill
A dangerous training exercise on Sixth Street leaves a fireman with severe hand injuries after equipment fails.
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.
H. E. Ross, a member of truck No. 2 at fire department headquarters, was severely injured Friday while practicing a 'slide for life' drill on Sixth Street near the Rainier Hotel. The exercise involved sliding down a rope from the top of an extended ladder, sixty-five feet above the ground. When Ross attempted to make his own adjustments to the equipment, the rope unwound from the hook, leaving him dangling in mid-air. Rather than swinging into the ladder, Ross chose to slide the remaining distance using his hands. The rope cut deeply into his flesh, exposing the bone. He managed to reach the ground safely, but his hands were mangled, requiring immediate medical attention and a leave of absence from Chief Hunt.
“The flesh had been cut to the bone, and as the veins commenced to let out the blood the hands looked as if they had been chopped and hacked.”
This reflects the extremely hazardous nature of early industrial firefighting in Seattle. Practicing on 65-foot ladders without modern safety harnesses highlights the physical risks firefighters faced in the 1890s compared to today's rigorous safety standards.
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