Delayed Water Pressure Dooms Ballard Buildings
A fire in Ballard destroyed local businesses after the department struggled with water delivery, injuring a family of three.
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.
The buildings burned in Ballard yesterday morning belonged to Cors & Wegner, who kept a wine house on the corner of Second and Ballard avenues. The saloon was a two-story frame building, and adjacent were small one-story structures occupied by William Peterson as a grocery and shoe shop. Peterson, his wife, and a baby lived in the rear of the grocery and escaped in their night clothes, suffering minor burns. The fire department reached the scene promptly, but for some reason, the water was not turned on with equal speed. The total loss was $4,500, mostly insured.
“The fire department reached the scene of the fire promptly, and if the water had been turned on promptly the loss would not have exceeded $100.”
Ballard was a separate city until its 1907 annexation, and this fire highlights the growing pains of a town struggling to build municipal infrastructure alongside rapid development. The reliance on frame buildings and the struggle for adequate fire response were common, hazardous features of early Seattle neighborhood life.
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