The Cape Girardeau Democrat. (Cape Girardeau, Mo.) 1876-1909, 1894-11-03
AN AWFUL

Escape After the Fire was Once Started
Saved Her Bsbe-Horrible Scenes.
SEATTLE, WASH, Oct. 2s.-The peo-
pie of this city were Mortified yester-
day by a hotel holocaust which over
shade { in its fatalities the great fire
of 1889, when the greater portion OF
the city was laid in ashes.
In the destruction Of the West-street
hotel by fire at least sixteen inmates
lost their lives, amid all the ago
MES and horrors of cremation under
such surroundings. The victims iden-
tilted so far by shreds of unburned
clothing are as follows:
+. Boltman.
Angus Mcdonald.
C. Wilson Anderson.
Mrs. j. W. Huffman and two daugh-
tiers.
Andrew Otteson.
Mrs. Andrew Otteson.
The building was a two-story struc-
ture of corrugated iron, occupying an
entire square on the water front. It
was a fire trap with a maze of passages
which would confuse any person in h
absence of light The imp~ossibility Of
escape from such a ~death-pen when
flames were licking up everything
within reach and suffocating smoke
filed the heated air was apparent to
the firemen and Mortified spectators on
the street below. When the depart
ment responded to the alarm the build
ing was a mass of flames. The news
quickly spread that there were half a
hundred guests in the blazing trap,
twenty of whom were t~ransients.
1t was half an hour after midnight
when the fire apparatus came rushing
to the scene of death, but the fire
broke out so suddenly and with such
ferocity did the flames spread to every
part of the structure that a terrible
panic prevailed among the inmates.
Clad only in their night clothing, men
and women jumped from the windows
without waiting to see if the firemen
could rescue them. Most of those who
jumped from the second-story windows
sustained n o injury of a serious char
acter. Three of those who escaped be-
ing burned alive or suffocated to death
were injured by jumping, one man
breaking a leg in his fall.
A frantic mother threw her baby Of
1 year into the street, where a police
man caught it without harm.
W. C. R. News dropped twenty feet
to the ground and picked himself up
unhurt.
Joseph A. May tied the sheets and
used them as a rope to let himself
down in safety.
c.. b. Glass waited at the window of
Then he jumped, his head striking the
ground. He was taken with the other
injured to a hospital.
The gallant firemeu came upon a
victim whose identity is not known,
near the top of the West-street stair
way. He was trapped by the rush Of
the flames and overcome by heat and
smoke. The firemen fought hard to
keep the flames back, but they were
soon driven away.
E. E. Bryant, a police officer, who
was the first to see the flames. turned
in the alarm and hen bravely rushed
back to save human lives. He found
Susan Allen and her little child at a
window on the West-street side. The
woman was crying pitifully for some
one to save her child. Bryant shouted
for her to drop it, which she did. The
officer caught the descending bit of
humanity in his arms and then set a
n plank against the window by which
the mother slid down in safety.
The proprietor of the fire box, H. F.
Butler. was in bed when the flames
burst into view from the street and had
a narrow escape from death.
His son, S. F. Butler, who was night
clerk, says the fire originated from the
explosion of a kerosene lamp in the
kitchen, which was located on the Sec
ond floor near the lower hall. The
sound of the explosion was clearly
heard on the street. Butler raised the
cry of fire, which aroused the guests t o
their danger, and to their death in
many cases. Many of the victims
awoke and rushing into the narrow.
winding passages found themselves
face to face with flames, smoke and
death. Some of the dead were suffo-
Gated or buraed to death in their beds,
parts of their charred bodies being
found in hat way.
Escape by the narrow stairways was
cut off to those who got that far, and
all rushed to the only avenue of safety,
the windows overlooking the street.
The body of the first victim was
found in a room, with one leg in his
trousers and his shoe partly laced.
The head was covered with bedclothes
under the bed. 1t was too much burned
to be identified.
Not a person in the building escaped
with anything except the clothes they
had on them.
After two hours hard work the fire.
men had the flames under control.
Only the Quilted hull of the hotel was
left. The woodwork of the interior
almost entirely consumed, but the
corrugated iron walls were left stand
ing.
As soon as the work of searching for
the dead was considered safe, thirteen
bodies were quickly found In the rooms
and passages, the postures and bed
covering of many showing they had
died in awful agony after a desperate
fight against fame and smoke.
Close together in the bed of one room
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