The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1883-01-17
ANOTHER HOTEL FIRE.
The Servants Apartment of the Planters
House, St Louis, Bu-ned-Timely EscaPs
of the Guests-Three Lives Lost.


House, st. Louis, Bu-ned-Timely Escape
of the Guests-Three Lives Lost.
ST. LOUIS, Jan. 14.-It was just ten min
utes past o'clock this morning when the
fireman in the engine-room OF the Planters
House discovered live Goals dropping on the
paved alley just outside of the window.
Going out, he found the alley so densely
filed with smoke it was impossible to dis
tinguish the locality OF the fire which caused
it. The Goals, however, evidently came
from the store-room of the hotel, which is
a part OF frame structure extending out
across the alley at the second floor, and abut-
ting on the large furniture ware
rooms of the auction house of Block,
Tyler & Co. The fireman ran to the
end of the alley, where high gates enclose
it, making with the frame structure a long,
narrow room, in which the smoke had &C
cumulated. He succeeded in getting the
gates open, thus creating a current which
carried off some of the smoke and then re-
turned to extinguish the fire. He found,
however, that it had a strong hold on the
store room and in the kitchen, which is i'm
mediately over the boiler room where he
was at work. He gave an alarm, and in
three minutes the hotel was a bedlam.
Nearly 800 people. filed with horrible recol-
lections of the Milwaukee holocaust were
dashing hither and thither through the
main corridors and down the several stair
ways into the office and street. The hotel
employees acted with good sense aEd
promptness, rapplng long anu on eveIy
door in the house and FIVE mia
utes later making second tfjp
to insure that everybody was up and ad-
vised of the danger. Very few waited to
dress, as the smoke from the rear building
where the fire was located, had already in
vaded the corridors and was making It's way
slowly into the rooms, stopping only to
grab few articles of clothing Men, VIC
men and children fled in dismay, and would
not halt even in the comIGodious main
Office, where there was light, comfort and
little smoke. As the engines, the first Of
which arrived within fifty seconds of the
sounding of the alarm, dashed up to the
hotel the stream of frightened fugitives
began to pour from its doors. There Were
men in naught bnt their underclothes VIC
men with but night dress and possibly
shawl or cloak over their shoulders, and
little children hastily bundled in blankets
or other wraps, few with shoes and
a great many in their bare
feet. The lights of the Republican and
Globe Democrat offices and of gambling
house, all of which were within distance
of block led the half-crszed people TO tenn
porary refuge of warmth, whence carriages
in few moments removed them to other
hotels. Some of the scenes incident to this
hegira we're quite thrilling, their effect
being intensified by the rattle, clang and
shrek OF the engines and shouts of the fire
men. Soon the main body of the hotel was
clear of guests aud the building was in pos
session OF the firemen, who, within twenty
minutes, as the re ult of a secSnd alarm,
had thirteen engines at work.
Meantime events in the rear of the build
ing were of far more ugly character. The
hotel, which is six stories in height, fronts
on the west side of Fourth street, from
Chestnut to Pine, while wing runs back
on both Chestnut and Pine streets to
departments. half block. Thus the main
building forms three sides of rectangle.
The fourth side is formed by a four story
building forty years old, midway on which
on the ground floor is the boiler room
above referred to, and the kitchen on the
floor above it. The two upper floors are
occupied by the help of the house, some
seventy-five in number. Alongside the
boiler room a narrow stairway rises and
winds 10 the roof The fire, which started
very close to this stairway, was carried mp
TO the roof by the draft in the stairwel,