Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA
1894 - Fire

Lumber Street, on the west, which is the first highway running parallel with the water front, is lined with tenement houses. The occupants of these dwellings became panic stricken, and took out their household goods in great haste. Fortunately, but a few of the dwelling were reached by the flames.

There were few who saw the fire in its early stages who believed that Lumber Street could be made in any great measure a boundary of the burned district. Three small dwellings and a barn were destroyed, and a few others were damaged, but this was slight to what might have been if the fire had spread as it seemed bound.

The people of the district did effective work by promptly forming independent fire companies and keeping their property well soaked with water.

When the fire was under control there remained of the buildings and stock in the Newell yard and the premises of the Olney & Payne Brothers nothing but piles of glowing embers, with here and there a few charred timbers, which were ready to fall at any moment.

On the premises of these two firms the destruction was complete.
Of the buildings and supplies in the Pawtucket City coal yards there remained only a few piles of coal unburned. Cottrell was more fortunate than the others, in that the progress of the flames was confined to the coal sheds on the water front. The fire gained a start in the lumber department, but was quickly checked and a large part of Cottrell's property was saved.

The Pawtucket Gas Company's plant, from which is furnished power for street lighting and electric railway service, had a remarkably narrow escape. The wires by which the power is conveyed were burned away very early in the progress of the fire. When the wires fell, street cars in all sections of Pawtucket and the Blackstone Valley to the north, and also on the Pawtucket and Branch Avenue routes came to a stand still.

The railway officials as soon as possible made connections between these lines and the dynamos at the electric plant in this city, by which traffic was resumed.

There were two Bee Linc barges and a two-masted schooner, the Zampa, in wharf-age at Olney and Payne Brothers, when the fire swept through Newell's yard. The barges were cut loose and allowed to drift down the stream, and they escaped practically unharmed.

The Zampa was hauled to the gas company's dock. Before it could be gotten away from the burning premises the flying flames attacked the masts, and in less than half an hour the topmasts were burned away at the cross-trees.

A steamer, with a hose company, was detailed to save the schooner. Two streams, poured high into the air against a gale of wind, and forced by a steam pressure of 85 pounds, were constantly directed on the burning masts. For more than an hour the flames held sway at the cross-trees. The best the firemen could do was to keep the mast sprayed, but they saved the schooner.

The New York Times
New York, New York
May 17, 1894

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