Baltimore, MD Fire, Jan 1908

THREE KILLED IN WORST FIRE BALTIMORE HAS HAD SINCE CALAMITY IN 1894

BALTIMORE, Jan. 24.- Fire today took heavy toll from the members of the fire department of this city, three being dead, and sixteen others more or less seriously injured. The list of the latter includes George Horton, chief of the fire department, who is in a serious condition. He has a badly lacerated scalp, and internal injuries. The dead are: Lieutenant FREDERICK HARMAN, WILLIAM B. PUGH, an unidentified man, thought to be EMIL MORIN.

The financial damage is estimated at $400,000. The blaze which is the worst that has occurred in this city since the calamity of 1894, started on the third floor of the building on the southeast corner of Holliday and Saratoga streets, occupied by the J. Regester Sons Company, plumbers supplies; the Baltimore Bell and Brass Company, and the William L. Hollinsworth Company, machinists.

Upon these three the heaviest losses fall. The fire had apparently been burning for some time before it was discovered. The first alarm was quickly followed by a general alarm, which brought most of the fire apparatus in the city to the scene. A strong wind from the northwest and a very low temperature made the work of fighting the fire more than ordinarily difficult and the flames spread rapidly.

In an incredibly short time after, the blaze brought out the windows of the Saratoga street side of the Regester building, and without the slightest warning, a large section of the north wall fell. It was this that scattered death and injuries among the firemen, who had been working near the building. A rain of bricks also put out of commission a ladder truck on which some of the men had been working. Saratoga street at this point narrows sharply.

For a time it seemed that the fire would sweep diagonally through the block to Gay street, and a number of people living on that thoroughfare moved their effects. Changes in the wind, however, helped the firemen and enabled them to confine the damage

When the wall of the Regester building fell, members of the fire and police departments utterly disregarded the fact that a wall threatened to fall into Saratoga, and worked frantically to rescue their comrades. The latter were badly mutilated and the former were in some instances almost stripped of their clothing.

While responding to the alarm a hose carriage and fire engine collided and five of the men on the engine were injured, one of them seriously.

Reno Evening Gazette, Reno, NV 24 Jan 1908
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Transcribed by Jenni Lanham.