The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1904-02-19

like bonfire, burning away quietly
some twenty-four hours after every
other combustible article had been con-
sumed. Out Of the middle of a pile of
dead, blackened debris in one corner of
ruined building rose steady bright
yellow flames that. must have been
burning all night and all day with ap-
parently nothing but bricks and NOR
tar to feed on. All these things SEEM
ed to me like nothing but gas mans
tricks. Then the background Of the
picture, the gray clouds. occasionally
lighted from behind or rolling away
FOR moment to show an endless sue
cessiOn of roof1ess buildings, would be
the easiest thing in the world for a
stage manager to arrange with few
red light globes. a steam pipe and
some painted canvas. 1t was Won
derful sight. but the whole sensation
was that Of taking an excursion to see
the shows of some gigantic midway
plaisance.
''Then. local pride, so intense that it
demands that even local calamities
shall exceed those of other cities, was
not absent from the minds of the Bal
timorcans. l walked down to the rail
way station with young man who
had been fighting the fire necessarily
at the docks of the company with
which he held position, and this was
his account Of the affair: The Chicago
fire was not patch beside this one.
What did they have out there thirty
years ago to burn anyway? Frame
buildings, low and cheaply constructed,
for that was before the day Of substan-
tial editices depending upon elevators
for getting up and down. believe one
Of our buildings, like the sixteen story
Continental Trust was worth more
than an average four blocks of the
Chicago fire. When the figures are to-
taled-and you know the Chicago est-
mates were much inflated, 50 insurance
men tell me. because the Chicagoans Of
that day had an eye out for sensational
advertising-it will be found that our
loss was by far the worse.
"'But our loss here in Baltimore is
nothing to what it would have been if
our fire department were at all like
that Of other cities. 1t seemed to me as
If the whole New York department
could not put one fair sized Baltimore
fire out. The methods of the New
Workers are so different from those of
our own men that it is impossible to
compare them except to say that the
New York fireman looks out for good
place where he can stand and shoot his
hose at the fire. The Baltimore fire.
man goes right in after it. Our men
push their way into buildings in order
.te,throw their energies where they will
do most good. The New Yorker is all
right, but his idea seems to me to be
that of long range artillery.
"In regard to the reports that no
lives have been lost, 1 desire to say
that while we all wish that it might
be true no reasonable man can believe
1t. How does any one know that no
one has been killed by these falling
walls or suffOcated in the acres Of
burning territory in which men were
struggling for dear life i'll the last few
minutes? Our firemen have taken
enormous risks. Private citizens, try
ing to save property, have gone to
great lengths, and not until the ruins
are cleared will it be known how many
lives have been lost. A fire is very
seductive foe. In the lumber yard dis
tricts one might often notice that those
who were permitted to go behind the
lines would be lured by their own in
terest in peculiar point Of attack into
remaining much longer than was safe.
Suddenly somebody would call atten-
ton to the approach Of flames from an
other direction, and the way the group
that had collected would run for their
lives was striking sight. 1t does not
stand to reason that in all of these
brushes the fire has been deprived of
its prey. l expect to see quite death
roll when the results of this disaster
have been tabulated.