The Mena weekly star., 1913-09-11
HOT SPRINGS LOST
 6 MILLIONS BY FIRE
Flames Started in Heart of City of Nap0rs and, Driven by High Wind, Swept All Before Them Over an
 Area of Nearly 200 Acres.

Hot Springs, Sept. 5.-The most disastrous conhagration which ever visited Hot Springs started in some negro frame cabins within a block of the Army and Navy hospital about 3:30 this afternoon.
 Under ordinary conditions the fire would have been extinguished with slight loss, but the drouth of the past two months had made the buildings so inflammable, and a strong wind blowing from the northwest soon carried the fire to a thickly populated business and residence section on Malvern ave- nue, where 1t spread to nearly half a mile in width and swept south through a section of the city more than a mile in length, destroying hundreds of buildings including some of the principal business houses of the city.
 Among the large buildings de- stroyed within the space of an hour and a half were the Park Hotel, water, light and electric plants, Peoples Laundry, Crystal Theater, Iron Mountain station and shops, Ozark Sanitarium, high school building, Garland county court house. Moody Hotel, Princess Hotel and Bijou rink.
 Hundreds of smaller business buildings and many residences, in cluding some of the most palatial in the city, were destroyed, and the fire was still burning unchecked at s 80 D. m., sweeping in the direc- ton of South Hot Springs, with a shifting wind threatening the Central Avenue business district.
 There were no casualties report ed. and no serious injuries. The loss up to $ o'clock was estimated
 at S4,OO0,OOO.
 Within fifteen minutes from the time the fire started it was wholly beyond the control of the fire de- partment, and help was asked from Little Rock. A special train brought
 additional equipment, but human
 ingenuity with water, dynamite and every other known means of fight ing fire failed, as the flames spread and frame and brick business blocks
 were razed in a few minutes time. The fire fighters would no sooner get located for another desperate
 stand than the fire would sweep past them and break out in a dozen different places at the same time. | Dynamite was freely used, but nothing could stop the rush of the flames. One of the first big struc- lures to go was the electric light and power plant, and as night grew on the city was in darkness save for the flames, which lit up the
 whole city.
 Shifting wind currents changed the course of the fire on three dlt-
 ferent occasions, the gale at times blowing forty miles an hour. Changing winds twice threatened to turn the flames back along the Central and Ouachita avenue busi- ness districts, which would have meant the destruction of the entire citv. There was no chance Ot checking the flames, but at the cor ner of Central and Market streets the combined fire departments made a last determined effort to save the business and reservation section. and succeeded in diverting the course of the fire in the dlrec- tion of South Hot Springs, in which section it is still burning.
 At 8 o'clock more than fifty blocks of buisness and residence buildings had been burned. So rap idly was the rush of the fire that few families had opportunity to
 save their belongings, and many families lost all their furniture and
 household effects.
 An idea of the fury of the fire IS evidenced by the fact that lines Of
 hose carrying streams of water
 would burn, and efforts to save
 buildings by playing streams or water upon them availed nothing .
 An estimate of the number or
 buildings burned or the financial
 loss is only guesswork. The ire swept a section seven to ten blocks
 wide and more than a mile in length.
 At S:9O D. m. the wind had again
 veered towards the business sec
 tion. but with the setting Of the sun the heavy gale which had pre-
 vailed all the afternoon died down
 somewhat and there was hope that
 the fire might be checked in it's
 course towards the central portion
 of the city.
 | Fuvl- -vI-