Creosote Fire in North Seattle
A spectacular industrial explosion at a wood-preserving plant in North Seattle raises alarms about the city's inadequate fire infrastructure.
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.
A terrific explosion followed by an outburst of flames in and about J. M. Colman's creosoting works in North Seattle, at the foot of Harrison street, yesterday morning startled the residents in that section. It appeared that one of the cylinders in which piles are boiled in a creosote bath blew off a cap, and sent the liquid in a column into the air. An eyewitness says that the fluid rose to about 100 feet. Everything that was touched commenced to burn. Frank Stail, an engineer, stood less than four feet from the cylinder that exploded but escaped without injury. As has frequently been the case in North Seattle and Queen Anne, a long stretch of hose was necessary. The firemen were equal to the emergency, but any day there may be a case where the lack of sufficient hydrants will cause a large loss. A further point that should be attended to is the lack of alarm boxes on Queen Anne hill. The whole district has to depend on box 58 at the corner of Temperance and High streets. This state of affairs appears to many of the residents as unjust.
“As has frequently been the case in North Seattle and Queen Anne, a long stretch of hose was necessary.”
This incident captures the growing pains of a booming Seattle, where rapid industrial expansion on the waterfront frequently outpaced the city's ability to provide basic public safety services like fire protection.
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