Steilacoom’s Editor Asks Who Will Start the Fire Brigade
With wooden buildings packed into the business district and no reservoir, engine or ladder company, the Puget Sound Herald warns that a single blaze could erase the town’s prospects.
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.
Until within the past few months, we have been compelled to consider any very extensive injury likely to result from fire, and have been favored above many places from visitations of the devouring element. But now that our town has become more compactly built, a fire could scarcely break out in the business portion of our place without sweeping the entire business portion. We have felt for some time extremely troubled lest our bright and cheering prospects should be temporarily damped by a visitation from the dreadful element, which has laid low many a flourishing town within the past few years in California. We are entirely unprovided to offer any suitable resistance in case of fire. In view of this state of things, we have the liberty to make a suggestion or two, and are ready and willing to contribute our mite towards carrying them into effect. First, organize a fire brigade or company, choose a chief and subordinates, and be prepared to meet an emergency likely to occur at any moment. Two cisterns or reservoirs should be sunk and kept filled with water at points where they would be most convenient. Some eight or ten ladders and four or five hooks should be always ready (no wheels are required), so that, as is frequently the case, by the demolition of one building a fire might be checked from spreading. To put this simple but effectual plan into operation will require but a small outlay of money; and all contribute to it with that spirit which has ever been manifested by our citizens for the public good. Who will set the ball in motion?
“Who will set the ball in motion?”
Steilacoom in 1859 was a compact wooden town with no fire department; the editor’s call for cisterns, ladders and a volunteer brigade was a grassroots response to the same infrastructure gap growing towns face today. As wildfire and urban fire risk return to the foreground, the question of who pays for public safety—and who shows up—remains immediately recognizable.
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