Rock Island Daily Argus

A FORCIBLE EXAMPLE.
Yesterday Morning's Spectacle of the Inefficiency of the Present Fire System...Costly Loss of Time.

Yesterday morning's fire in the old-time jail building on Fifteenth street near Third avenue, and which has been used for some years as a tenement house, furnished another proof of the inefficiency of the present Rock Island system of fire protection. It was one of those frequent occurrences where delay is costly. An Argus representative happened to be conversing through the telephone where he heard some one call the waterworks and give the alarm. The Argus man in gratification of a spirit of curiosity pulled out his watch. Four minutes elapsed before the alarm sounded. Five minutes more and then came a tremendous clanging of bells. Men ran frantically through the streets and in course of time a little two wheeled cart was pulled out of the Wide-A-Wake hose house and started in the direction of the fire. Eight minutes more and then a harnessed horse galloped down Second avenue, followed a minute later by his companion. They were from a livery stable and were used to pull the hook and ladder truck to a fire that had been burning eighteen minutes. Three minutes more were consumed in getting the horses attached and the truck out of the house, and when the apparatus which should be the first at all fires arrived on the scene, twenty-five minutes had passed since the discovery of the fire. The Wideawake boys put in good licks after getting there and the Franklins, of course, were ready to do so, but the institution most needed was a ladder and pick to break a hole in the roof and locate the fire. All water thrown before this was useless and unnecessarily destructive to parts of the building not yet reached by the fire. Marshal Brennan was among the first on the scene, and to an Argus reporter he said: "I never saw so much time lost in getting at the fire. Nearly half an hour was lost before the hook and ladder wagon arrived. Had I had a ladder, I believe I could have quenched the fire in its incipiency with a few buckets of water without doing much damage. Even after the truck arrived, a fireman yelled out from one of the windows: Send your hose home and give me a bucket of water and I'll do more good here than the whole pack of you." Alderman Winter was one of the first to know of the fire, and hurrying down to the Wideawake hose house gave the alarm, pulled the cart to the fire and then worked like a Trojan to subdue the destroying element. He became completely soaked and chilled and thereby subjected himself to danger that a city the size of Rock Island ought to pay men to do.

With a properly equipped hook and ladder truck and some system of alarm, the city could yesterday have saved two families from being driven from their home-for the chief damage was done by water-and in one of those families was an invalid whose death may be the result of the exposure in being driven from the flooded house. The fire has served to illustrate to a number of aldermen the folly of longer maintenance of the present system, and if the city does not feel able to put in a thorough paid system the Argus would suggest that some such scheme as the Franklin's have for receiving an electric alarm be put in. That a number of the companies be disbanded and the four best provided with four-wheeled carts and horses kept on the premises, and that the hook and ladder truck be similarly provided and that the city appoint and pay the chief and provide one man to be at each of the various hose houses at all times, the chief to be one of these men. Then with proper recognition of the volunteer firemen the city would be in a measure protected.

The same failing that has characterized most fires recently, was again apparent -hydrants out of order. The one at the corner of Third avenue and Fifteenth street was in such condition that it was with great difficulty that the water was turned off after the fire. This disadvantage would be overcome with a paid department when the chief would find it one of his duties to see that the hydrants are in good repair.