The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1904-02-26
BALTIMORE
FIRE SCENES
Spectacular Features of the
Great Conhagration.
BURNED AREA LIKE A PANORAMA

BURNED AREA LIKE A PANORAMA
Spectators Impressed by the Theat-
rical Appearance of the Flames and
Ruins-Local Pride Of the Citizens
Shown Even In the Hour of Dire
C~alamity-A Baltimorcnn's sugges-
ton That Lives May Have Been
Lost.
A great conflagration without a
death roll cannot fail to impress the
observer by it's spectacular rather than
its tragic aspects. At Baltimore there
were none of the h%eartrending scenes
that accompanied such a disaster as
that of HOboken, N. j., where sailors
were burned to death with their faces
at the narrow portfolios Of the ships
and the water but a few feet beneath
them. The comments which one heard
on the streets were often quantity
phrased, bringing out unconsciously
the peculiar point of view from which
the common people of Baltimore, those
who have not themselves suffered loss
VI lOpCll Va CllpAOy AACAlI, lCSul Z
the disaster, says the New York Posts
special Washington correspondent.
you know this is unusual for Balti-
MORE" said one old burglfer to d Wis
itor who stood beside him looking at
the ruins. 1t vas precisely the phrase
lie would probably have used If the
civic authorities had prepared a fire
works display of uneXampled splen-
dor.
The very impossibility of grasping
the real magnitude of the city's calam-
ity helped to emphasize the theatrical
aspects Of the situation. The tract dew
astated was so vast that one who
had arrived after the flames had done
their work felt that it could not pos
sibly be real-that it must be all Il
magnificent counterfeit. "lt was u
great tribute to the scene painter
said a Washingtonian who made a fly
ing trip to Baltimore. II had seen a
number of reproductions on the stage
Of great conf1agrations, like The Last
Days Of Pompeii,' The Destruction of
Rome and The Heart of Chicago but
l never realized how truthfully they
had pictured those scenes of flaming
desolatiOn. If you ask what Baltimore
looked like could not answer you bet
ter than by telling you to 60 and see
n of those great stage spectacles.
II climbed to the roof Of the court
house, where l could overlook the
whole burned area. 1t was all exactly
like a panorama. The walls, with
their skeleton windows, might have
been painted on canvas, and the red
lights that threw their wild shadows
might have come from magnesium
powder.
"There were dozens of trivial cir
cumstances that bore out this impress
sion. In one tall building, for instance,
all the brick and stonework above the
first three stories had fallen except n
corner, which stood all by itself like a
spindling chimney of irregular outline.
1t was hard to believe that such a slen-
der and weak structure could have es-
capped being toppled over by mere force
of the wind, and I can't imagine now
why it did not fall when the rest of
the walls went over. 1t was just the
sort of grOtesque shape that a scenic
artist would cut out of canvas and
support with a framework, but that
bricks and mortar should assume such
a form seemed incredible.
"Then, again, little patches of fire
were left in such strange places. In
n of the upper stories of a complete
ly Quilted s%kyscraper was what looked
like a 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
a ruined building rose steady bright
yellow flames that must have been
burning all night and all day with APP
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 a moment to show an endless sue
cession of roofiess buildings, would be
the easiest thing in the world for a
stage manager to arrange with a few
red llgnC GLOBES, a steam pipe n
some painted canvas. 1t was a won
derful sight, but the whole sensation
was that of taking an excursion to see
the shows Of some gigantic midway
plaisnnce.
''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
timoreans. I walked down to the rail-
way station with a young man who
had been fighting the fire necessarily
at the docks of the company with
which he held a position. and this was
his account of the affair: The Chicago
fire was not a patch beside this one.
What did they have out there thirty