New Jersey Fire Notes.
The safety of a lot of valuable property on Broad street, Newark, was threatened when a fire broke out in the top floor of the Commercial Photographic studio, at No. 839. The fire was caused by the action of the chemicals used by the photographer, as happened on the same floor about four years ago, when the same photographer occupied the premises. In answer to the alarm came 4 steam engines (2 first-class, 1 extra-first and 1 double-extra first) ; 2 large hose wagons, 3 combination chemical engines and hose wagons, 2 large-size aerial trucks, the chief, deputy chief and 2 battalion chiefs, with the salvage corps and police reserves. Three of the wagons are equiped with the Glazier decknozzle. It was only a 1-alarm fire, but its location caused extra precautions to be taken. The high-pressure was turned on and its four streams worked so efficiently that only one engine was called upon. It threw one stream. The floors below were deluged with water and their contents (tailors’ goods and drygoods) very greatly damaged. The high-pressure streams were somewhat difficult to manage inside the building. The aerial ladder, as it was being raised, caught on a trolley guy wire stretched across the street. Frank Burrows, of truck No. 1, climbed to free it and was crawling over the rungs of the ladder when the truck suddenly moved forward and the ladder dropped. Burrows was left with his head hanging down and one leg between the rungs. Fortunately the ladder fell only part of the way and Deputy Chief Sloan, with the help of some of the firemen, extricated him’ He escaped with a sprained ankle. Burrows, however, who has only just joined the department, found it rather a rough first-experience.
A serious fire in a Newark saloon was quickly put out by an energetic policeman and a few pails of water. He saw smoke issuing from the door, and on running in found a small fire eating its way up the side wall, and the saloonkeeper and some of his customers trying to extinguish it. What was remarkable about the incipient blaze was that its apparent origin was the ignition from some cause or another of some roach powder which a demonstrating peddler of the stuff had sprinkled in the crevices of the floor near the wall. It is claimed that this suddenly burst into flame.
Fire that did about $10,000 damage destroyed six buildings, with twenty-one head of cattle, on the farm of Matthew Frank, near Hutchinson’s Mills, early in the night of Feb. 17. Midwinter lightning struck one of the barns on tlie premises, igniting it and starting a blaze that quickly spread to the other structures immediately ad joining, including the Frank home.
A Paterson correspondent writes that the “Volunteer hose company of the borough of Prospect Park has made up its full complement of members. It is a new company, and at present all its members are ftdl of zeal and attend the meetings with the greatest regularity. The officers are as follows: President, Krine Hook; vice-president, Barney Stap; secretary, Latuberttts Toun; treasurer, Philip Bregman. The company has asked the council of the borough to give them 12 fire buckets, 3 hooks, a 30-ft. lad der and 2 lanterns. Although the borough has but a small population, it has two fire companies, only one of which—the above organisation, claims to be ‘official.’ The other is not in such favor, the reason being that some of its members live in this city.”
Atlantic City merchants have been rudely disabused of the idea that, with the new water mains recently laid and the well equiped and efficient local fire department -and commonly accepted means for quickly extinguishing and keeping down fires, the insurance rates would be reduced. The Underwriters’ Association has shown the idea thus entertained to be utterly erroneous. The secretary and inspector, after having gone over the ground, still cling to the notion that a big conflagration is quite within the possibilities— and the rates remain the same.
