Spokane Has No Fire Department — Just a Few Ladders and a Lot of Luck
After a string of chimney fires nearly take out whole blocks, the paper demands a bucket brigade before a real blaze wipes the city off the map.
Monday evening our citizens were treated to two or three chimney alarms. In one instance the threatened danger met in the midst of a number of large frame buildings in the center of the city, where, had a fire started, nothing could have prevented a big fire that would have wiped out the city. While no alarm was turned in, in fact only one or two persons noticed the fire, yet the danger was none the less imminent. It would be well if our people exercised some care about their property.
We never know a community where so little interest is taken in self-protection against this insidious element — an irresistible, insatiable monster that is bound to force its unwelcome presence upon a town, no matter how small or well guarded, sooner or later. People seem to be perfectly indifferent to this one great matter. Not that they have not had experience enough already. On the contrary, on at least two occasions they have been compelled to stand by and see property go up in smoke before their eyes without the power or means to avert the same or save the buildings in which the fire originated.
There is not a city on the coast utterly unprotected. The only thing with the semblance of a fire department are a few ladders. There is no organization whatever. Few people even know where the ladders are stored, and even if they did, what use under heaven is a ladder without an engine, without a bucket, and utterly without water. It is pretty well assured that Spokane will have water works some time next summer, but in the meantime what is to be done for protection? Many valuable buildings have been added to the city this year, and should some of these blocks be destroyed merely because there is no measure in existence to fight fire, the loss to the city would be invaluable. If we cannot have an engine and the necessary apparatus at once, let the citizens at last go to work, form a company and establish a bucket brigade. Then let every man know just what he is expected to do in case of fire.
“There is not a city on the coast utterly unprotected. The only thing with the semblance of a fire department are a few ladders.”
Spokane's fear was well founded: the Great Fire of August 1889 would burn some thirty-two blocks of the young city to the ground, and out of those ashes came the modern paid fire department and a rebuilt downtown of brick and stone. The complaint that the city was 'utterly unprotected' is a reminder that disaster preparedness is usually funded only after the disaster.
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