Midnight Fire Wipes Out a Whatcom Shingle Mill and 19 Jobs
A hot box in the shingle mill ignites a $15,000 blaze on the Alton road, leaving Kenoyer Bros. and a lumber operator uninsured.
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.
WHATCOM, Aug. 21.—[Special.]—Kenoyer Bros.' shingle and saw mill, on the Alton road, six miles north of this city, was destroyed by fire at midnight. The fire caught from a hot box in the shingle mill, and in a few minutes the entire building was enveloped in flames. Kenoyer Bros.' loss is estimated at $15,000, including the mill and 200,000 shingles which were on hand. F. Q. Underwood, who has been operating the mill, lost nearly all his lumber, on which there was no insurance. The mill was not insured. Capacity of shingle mill 40,000, and of saw mill 20,000 daily. Nineteen men were employed.
“The fire caught from a hot box in the shingle mill, and in a few minutes the entire building was enveloped in flames.”
Whatcom was a mill town before it merged into Bellingham, and shingle and saw mills were both the economic engine and a constant fire risk. The uninsured losses and the instant idling of 19 workers show how quickly a single industrial accident could become a household crisis—a pattern that still haunts timber country.
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