Narrow Escape in the Business District
A late-night fire is extinguished in a downtown shoe shop just before it could engulf the surrounding blocks.
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.
Yesterday morning shortly after 1 o'clock, Officer Jones, who has the Commercial street beat, noticed a bright light in the shoe shop of P. Finnegan, directly opposite from the old Methodist church. The officer forced the door in and found that the fire had originated in a box of dry sawdust and had burned a hole through the floor of the room. He at once succeeded in extinguishing the flames, which in their incipiency was not a difficult task. A large can of coal oil stood close to the burning box, and no doubt in a very short time would have burst from the heat and enveloped the entire building in flames. The shop is adjacent to the San Francisco Hotel, and had the fire got good headway the loss of property would have been great.
“A large can of coal oil stood close to the burning box, and no doubt in a very short time would have burst from the heat and enveloped the entire building in flames.”
This incident occurred in the heart of early Pioneer Square, where dense, wood-frame construction made fire the single greatest threat to the city's survival. Today, that same area remains the core of the city, though the fire department no longer relies on beat officers to catch spontaneous sawdust fires.
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