The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-02-09
FOR 2s HOURS THE
 FLAMES WERE RAGING.

Baltimore, Feb Sg-Baltimore is stag gering tonight under fire loss which no one has the teInerity to put into fig ures. The important commercial district is blackened ruins. laid bare by a con- fagration which ragged without a mo- mentary check from 1O:45 a. m. yester- day until late in the afternoon to-day. At 8 o'clock the city officials again breathed. It was agreed the flames were under control. They had ragged twenty eight hours in spite of almost superhu- man efforts put forth by the best fight ing forces which more than half doz- en cities were able to muster
 The city is overcast with gloom. The only lights in the burned district are those from the smouldering ruins. The only lights in that section which escaped destruction are from corner gas lamps. The stores are closed in nearly every street. The darkened avenues are full of jostling people talking of one subject. Apparently there is but one cause for gladness and that is that there are no homeless. Tho residence section of the city escaped. This phase of the sttua- tion relieved the officials from any thought other than property.
 FLAMES CHECKED
 AT JONES FALLS. At o'clock the Associated Press sent out a bulletin say'~g the flames would be held in check at the Union docks and prevented from leaping Jones Falls and placing the entire city east of there in jeopardy. At , o'clock that bulletin was confirmed. A score of times flames from the fire were found tapping the sides of lumber piles on the east bank of the Falls. In some instances the lumber was tossed into the Falls and in similar cases heroic eoffrts stayed the onward syyeeu of the flames. Throughout the district in which firemen worked for supremacy they were handicapped by gale which carried burning brands over the heads of the workers and beyond the reach of the hundreds of streams of water poured into the raging furnaces. But for the work of volunteers in seeking out and extlnguishing these embers if Ia al. most certain the burned area would have been twice larger ..an it is About 7f squares or 14O acres are in ashes.
 Insurance companies have opened tenn. porary offices in the Lexington hotel hut their representatives decline to estimate the loss. The answer to one Is typical of all: It's too big. We have no fpuroe to describe it. Make it above one hnn- dred million, that's the est we can do :, The same indecision was true with re- gard to estimates concerning insurance CITY IS PLACED
 UNDER MARTIAL LAW
 The city was early placed under mar tial law and thus all danger of footing in the doomed district was eliminated Word was received tonight that General Corbin of New York would be here to- morrow to take command of the Federal troops The presence of two regiments of military as an adjunct to the police. which were augmented by details from Philadelphia and Washington, resulted in the maintenance of the best of order. No one dares to guess what would have happened had the flames jumped the Falls The struggle today has been with the one end of confining the fire to the west side of the muddy stream. That this effort was successful is merely the result of the fire burning itself out and coming IA HsntaNt-with the concentrated Iabors