Blast Injures Many in Morristown
Morristown, N. J., was visited by a serious fire in the business district on September _2, which caused loss estimated at $500,000 to a four-story brick business building and other property.
Shortly after the fire department arrived on the scene a blast, believed due to back-draft, occurred on the second floor of the building. Two largeplate glass windows, including the window sash, blew to the opposite side of the street, showering many of the crowd of spectators with glass and debris. More than fiftv persons required first aid. Peculiarly enough, in this instance injuries were entirely confined to civilians. Firemen, working close to the building escaped injury, as the flying debris went over their heads. The force of the explosion was so great that one of the lights on the fire department’s searchlight apparatus was torn from its anchorage.
The fire, of undetermined origin, for which three alarms were sounded, appears to have started in the rear of a store occupied by the National Shoe Co. From there it spread to a Schulte United Store on the left. To the right the fire progressed through four smaller stores before being checked at a fifth. Above these stores was a dance hall, a packing plant of the Weston Biscuit Co., dentists’ offices, a rooming place and three private apartments. Some twenty-eight persons living on the upper floors escaped injury but were left homeless.
Firemen, assisted by help from neighboring communities, labored fifteen hours before the fire was extinguished. Chief Green of Morris Township, an adjoining community, dispatched four of his five fire companies to Morristown shortly after the second alarm was sounded. All of them operated on the fire throughout most of the night. Morris Plains also dispatched an engine company which was assigned to coverup.
The Morristown Fire Department is volunteer with the exception of ten paid men and Chief of Department, John J. Cullinan, who was in charge of the fire. The entire department, consisting of three pumpers, an aerial truck, hose truck with deck-pipe, fire patrol unit and a searchlight truck, and ambulance respond on box alarms. The ambulance is a unit of the auxiliary firemen but, since the termination of OCD, the auxiliaries have continued their services to the community as an independent organization. At this fire they worked with the Morristown Chapter of the Red Cross whose unit disaster chief is William Lynch. The training in first-aid stood these auxiliaries in good stead in caring for and transporting the blast victims to the hospitals.
Although the building was completely gutted by the fire, the department fire forces under Chief Cullinan’s guidance were able to check it from spreading through the entire Speedwell Avenue block, which is all of the same type construction, dating back to 1890.
