This is transcribed from a scan of the original page by an extremely untrustworthy source, fultonhistory.com. Many illegible lines would appear to be scanner artifacts, but then many deliberate manipulations in the text are also evident.
January 9, 1912, The Evening Post: New York, "Equitable Burns,"
Tuesday,
page 1, Column 5,
EQUITABLE BURNS
Five Known to Be Dead; List May Lengthen
MEN CAUGHT IN BLAZING VAULTS
Deputy Fire Chief "Walsh Probably Lost — A Priest Who Was Administering the Last Rites to a Man Burning to Death on the Other Side of a Steel Grating Had to Be Dragged Out of Harm's Way by Firemen—Big Banks Closed Because of Disaster and All Traffic Is Tied Up.
There was disaster of many angles in to-day's destruction of the Equitable Lite Assurance Society's building on lower Broadway. Merely as an affair of flame and smoke, it was the greatest blaze modern New York had seen. Because of the old stone and wood construction of the building, it offered a new problem to the present generation of firemen, a problem which they could not solve. The money loss was between $15,000,000 and $30,000,000, a record figure for a one-building fire.
Five bodies have been found, and Battalion Chief Walsh of the Fire Department is the only person known to be missing. It is taken for granted that Walsh is dead in the building. The list of missing may lengthen at the roll-call of the companies. Eight persons were seriously injured and six of them were taken to hospitals. But scores of others, including firemen and policemen, were hurt and attended at the fire by the ambulance surgeons.
In addition to destroying the lives and the property, the fire caused an unprecedented tangle of buisness in the financial district. Seceral banks in the immediate neighborhood could not be opened. So many millions of dollars worth of securities were in the vaults of the burned building that the Stock Exchange had to take an unprecedented action in suspending for a day the rule that stocks shall be delivered before 2:48 o'clock on the afternoon following the day of sale.
It was impossible to get to the New York Clearing House, across the street from the smoking shell of the Equitable building, so the business of that institution, so vital to the banking of the country, had to be transferred to the Chamber of Commerce.
Every available piece of fire apparatus in the city was brought to the scene of the fire, in response to the "borough alarm," the call which always indicates a catastrophe. Every fire company in Manhattan below Fifty-ninth Street was rushed downtown, the companies above them being moved down to take their places, while practically all the available apparatus in Brooklyn was summoned and raced across the Brooklyn Bridge, the north roadway of which was closed to all other traffic. It was the most serious fire, in a financial way, New York had ever known.
[W i l l i SERVICE DEFKOTITK]
The vaunted high-pressure system, as well as the alleged fire-proof construction of the Equitable building, utterly failed to do what had been expected of it. In the face of the high wind that came with the renewal of the cold wave, in the early hours of the morning the streams of water from the hose nozzles were broken into showers of spray that blew aimlessly hither and thither, coating the streets and surrounding buildings with glistening ice. Broadway became a miniature mountain torrent, through which water and caking ice swished ankle-deep. Over all towered a vast column of dingy yellow smoke, shot through with blazing sparks that covered the city roofs for an area of a mile or more around the burning building.
The most serious affect of the fire upon business lay in its paralysis of all the downtown banks, most of which had securities in the safe deposit vaults under the Equitable building. It was impossible to open tbe Clearing House in the face of the fire, and after a short delay, the entire force of clerks who transact its affairs were ordered to report at the Chamber of Commerce, when temporary headquarters were opened. Shortly after the Stock Exchange opened, the Governing Committee were summoned to discuss the question of closing the Exchange for the day.
The committee finally decided to compromise matters by merely suspending deliveries.
But they might just as well have closed for the day, as business was practically dead. The only interest exhibited on the floor was when a subscription was offered for the families of the dead and injured.
It is impossible to exaggerate the enormous property losses involved in this fire. Aside from the valuable building, and the contents of many richly furnished offices, not to speak of innumerable law libraries belonging to tenants, there were lost the great law libraries of the Equitable Society and the Lawyers' Club, both of which were numbered among the finest collections of legal records in the country. All of the 1,600,000 record cards of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, which were kept in thin steel cabinets in the secretary's office, have been destroyed. But fortunately a duplicate set of these cards was kept in the Hazen building. It will take five years to copy off another duplicate list, however.
The contents of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company's vaults must be worth millions, and it is as yet unknown whether any of these securities have been melted or incinerated. One man wandered about the corridors of an office building across the street all the morning, wailing that his entire fortune was buried beneath the smoking debris that towered in a heterogeneous mass two stories above the safe deposit vaults. The biography of the late E. H. Harriman. which was looked forward to by the whole financial world as one of the most important contributions to the literature of business, was among the other records which perished, along with practically all the records of the Union Pacific Railway, the Equitable Trust Company, August Belmont & Co., Kountze Brothers, and a number of other well-known firms.
THREE BANKS CLOSED
Three banks—the Chase National, American Exchange, and National Bank of Commerce—which are in the block on Broadway fronting the wrecked building were not opened at all, as owing to the fire lines it was impossible for people to get to them. Together with the hallways of other office buildings, notably the Trinity building, they were turned into temporary hospitals and first relief stations for the dozens of firemen who reeled or were carried out of the seething chaos.
Other banking and brokerage firms in the neighborhood soon followed the example of the three banks mentioned above and suspended business to care for the injured firemen. [...] Raymond A. Pinchon, No. [..] Broadway, the entire business force [...] the firemen in relays of twenty-five each with food and coffee, relief that the tired smoke-eaters were much in need of, for many of them had been working since before seven o'clock in the
morning.
BROWNING OF THE FIRE-
It was twenty minutes after five o'clock this morning when Sergeant Casey and Patrolman Foley of the John Street police station were standing at the corner of Nassau and Pine Streets and a man told them that there was a fire in the Equitable building. They ran around the corner to the Pine Street side of the building, where the ground floor, from the Broadway corner half-way down Pine Street, is occupied by the Savarin Restaurant. They entered the restaurant, and found that there was a fire blazing in the storeroom adjoining the elevator shaft. William Davit, chief engineer of the building, was already fighting the blaze with several lines of hose connected to the standpipe.
According to the two policemen, Davis told them that he had twenty assistants in this building, including cleaners, electricians, firemen, porters, and watchmen, and that the force could manage the fire by themselves; but Casey, after a look at the situation, thought it best to turn in an alarm. That he was justified in his action was amply proved by the time Deputy Chief Binns, in command of the First Division, arrived in his car. Before this the fire in the storeroom had eaten its way into the elevator shaft, up which it shot in a powerful draught and spread out on all the floors above the third.
Binns promptly turned in a second and third alarm, which brought Chief Kenlon and Joseph Johnson, Fire Commissioner. It was still dark, and in the scanty light the firemen began to set about their task of locating the source of the fire. Rhinelander Waldo, the Commissioner of Police, also drove up in his automobile about this time, and directed the disposition of the reserves from all the downtown precincts who were there shortly after the second alarm was sent in.
Kenlon gave one glance at the interior of the structure, rearing and blazing with flames, and sent in a fourth and fifth alarm, which he quickly followed up with the "double nine," the "borough call," that brought fourteen companies from Brooklyn under Deputy Chief Lally. The north roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge was closed to all traffic while the racing engines were rushed across the river to the aid of the hard-pressed companies which had hurried from all of lower Manhattan. The re-
"Equitable Burns, [Page 3, Column 1,]"
...nit, of course, the congestion of all roadway traffic far across into King County, a congestion that extended to the Brooklyn elevated and subway line. The Broadway cars, which run directly under the burning building, were tied up throughout the entire day.
The Brooklyn apparatus arrived on the 1 Nassau Street side of the burning structure just as an unidentified man appeared at a window on the next to the top floor of the structure. The man was seen to run wildly from one window to another. There was no chance of a rescue, as the flames first pouring from the lower floors on this side and sweeping up to the top corners on the Nassau Street side. It seemed only a matter of a few minutes before the man trapped on the seventh floor would jump to the street or be engulfed in the flames.
The firemen from across the East River immediately got into action. Twenty-one streams were directed against the Nassau Street side, but the water was blown back by the wind before it could strike effectively. There were three water towers sent from Brooklyn, as well as other apparatus.
Most of the efforts of the Brooklyn companies were directed toward saving the building at the corner of Nassau and Cedar Streets. In the "L" of the Equitable building, occupied by W. A. Read & Co. bankers.
WOMAN WOULD NOT LEAVE.
The Brooklyn reinforcements also bent their efforts to saving the Belmont building across Nassau Street from the Equitable building. An aged woman, a caretaker in this building, absolutely refused to leave it, despite the warnings of the firemen, and caused considerable trouble for them by running back and forth from floor to floor, throwing up the window shades. Finally she was escorted to a place where she could not interfere with the firefighters, and the building was flooded with water as a precaution.
Thanks to the early hour at which the fire started—in the basement supply rooms of the Cafe Savarin, according to one report—the building was practically deserted, which explains the comparatively small loss of life.
All through the early hours of the forenoon the firemen worked desperately, handicapped by the bitter cold and the fierce gale that swept the nozzles of their hose and robbed the streams of their initial power. At eleven o'clock, although the wind had diminished. It was still blowing fifty-four miles an hour. It seems superfluous to mention the heroism, because heroism is a commonplace with New York firemen. The fact remains, though, that whenever word came that a man was missing or that some one was trapped on the upper floors a score of volunteers rushed forward to offer their services, and the scaling ladders were always manned by some willing to take any risk.
PRAYERS ON THE ROOF.
It was a little more than an hour after the fire had started that the figures of three men were made out on the roof of the cupola at the corner of Broadway and Cedar Street. Their forms could be dimly seen through the gloom and smoke out-side, against the glare of the flames
[unintelligible] then they were seen to kneel on the [unintelligible] and lift up their arms in prayer or supplication toward the first level rays of the sun, just breaking across the tops of the tall buildings over toward the East River.
A shout went up from the firemen in the street below, and five men of one of the patrol companies seized scaling ladders and made a plucky effort to work their way up the side of the building so that they could get at the trapped men. But flames shot out from the windows of the fourth floor directly over the firemen's heads, and they were compelled to drop to the ground. Simultaneously, a portion of the roof near where the men were standing fell in, part of it falling to the street, and part into the pit of flames.
Stone of many tons' weight began to drop among the ranks of the firemen and they were obliged to break and run out of the danger zone. The three men on the roof had risen to their feet when the roof began to fall and stood hesitating on the edge of the coping. As the firemen ran away they threw up their hands, then two of them jumped, their bodies twisting and turning in air as they plunged down on to the Cedar Street pavement. The third man fell back into the well of fire.
At the Greenwich Street police station the bodies of the two who had jumped were identified as those of two kitchen helpers in the Restaurant Savarin. John Saxslo and Gulaeppe Condi.
LOST BATTALION CHIEF WALSH.
Fear that William J Walsh, chief of the Second Fire Battalion, had lost his life in the building grew to a certainty when afternoon arrived with no trace of him being found in any of the hospitals to which the injured had been rushed. Sidney Johnston, captain of Truck No. 1. was the last man to see Walsh alive. He and Walsh and three other men went into the building with a line of hose early in the morning. They dragged the heavy roll upstairs to the fifth floor, and started for the rooms of the Lawyers' Club in the rear.
At the entrance to the club rooms, the party was halted by a scorching back draught. All five turned and fled to the floor below. Things were little better here. The smoke and heat were unbearable.
"For God's sake, every man look for himself." were Walsh's last words, according to Capt. Johnston.
The men took Walsh's advice. When they reached the street, each expected to see Walsh following at their heels. Walsh didn't appear.
It was hours before the firemen would consent to give their battalion chief up for lost. Chief Kenlon was at first of the opinion that Walsh might have been one of the injured men taken to the hospital. The coating of ice on each fighter's face was so thick that it would have been easy to have mistaken Walsh for someone else. So the Chief had a thorough search made of the hospitals in the fire zone. Then, after his men had all brought back disheartening reports, Kenton and his staff admitted that Walsh had perished in the building.
One of those who kept up the hunt even after that, was the driver of Chief Walsh's runabout. The man seemed dazed as he went from hospital to hospital saying "I've lost my chief. I've lost my chief."
Some believe that Walsh's body lay some where under the pile of ice-caked and charred timbers, more than a score of firemen began appealing to Chief Kenlon to let them go in and hunt for their battalion chief. They had, of course, abandoned all hope of finding him alive, but they wished to recover his body before it was too late. Walsh had always been a favorite among the men in the Department.
WANTED TO SEARCH FOR WALSH
Kenlon would not think of letting the men enter the building. He told them they would never get out alive if they stepped into that furnace, but that seemed to make no difference to them. They kept imploring for permission to undertake the job, and it was all Kenlon could do to deny them. One of the four men who went into the building with Walsh was Joseph Brown of truck No. 61.
"The Chief was quite a distance ahead of us," said he, "when suddenly we felt the floor begin to give way under us. Capt. Bass was in our party. A stone arch fell on him, and I saw he was badly hurt. I got my arm around him and managed to drag him to the street. On going back I went as near as I could to where we had been and called Walsh's name several times. I got no answer. I believe he was caught in the falling floor."
CROKER'S TRIBUTE TO HIM
"Walsh was one of the best fire chiefs we ever had in the Department," said Edward P. Croker, former chief of the Department, this afternoon when he heard that Walsh had been killed.
Walsh was married and had seven children. He lived in Brooklyn at No. 1170 Forty-second Street. In May this year he would have completed twenty years of service in the Fire Department, for he received his appointment on May 1, 1892. Three years later be was promoted to engineer, and in July, 1902, he became an assistant foreman. A year later he advanced to foreman, and held that position until last year, when they promoted him to battalion chief. Walsh was born in this city October 29. 1867, and on two occasions his name has been placed on the roll of merit for bravery.
Only last fall, Walsh all but lost his life in a fire in Brooklyn. The building was at No. 81 Duane Street occupied by the International News Company. Walsh stepped into a triangular air well, at the bottom of which were eight feet of water. The only thing he could hold onto in order to keep his head above water was an iron shutter, behind which the fire was raging; the heat of the shutter took the skin from his fingers, but he clung there until someone got a rope and lowered it to him from the top of the shaft many feet above.
Walsh's wife and one of his daughters went to the Equitable building that afternoon, but remained there only a short time. One of the sensational rescues was that of William Giblin, president of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, whose vault contain many of the valuable securities, the loss of which is tying up the city's financial business. Giblin heard of the fire soon after it started. He rushed downtown immediately, being one of the first to arrive at the scene.
When he arrived at his office, the safe deposit vaults were the only part of the building not in flames. He went to Fire Commissioner Johnson and told him he wanted to go inside to get at some records. Johnson warned him not to, but Giblin persisted, and opened the door with his pass-key, taking with him one of the company's night watchmen. Strangely enough, he neglected to take his keys with him, and as he and the watchman passed in the door swung shut after them, closing with a spring lock and making them prisoners in the smoky atmosphere of the vaults.
WORK OF THE PRIEST
Commissioner Johnson saw that Giblin was caught, and so did Father Mc[O]ean, one of the Fire Department chaplains Johnson and the priest called to some of the firemen near them, and they began to work to cut through the steel doors to get at the imprisoned men. For nearly two hours the firemen worked in the midst of a shower of granite blocks from the roof that threatened to crush them every moment. And throughout these two hours the Fire Commissioner and the chaplain stood by the firemen, encouraging them to greater exertion, while Father McOean, his head protected by a heavy fireman's helmet, knelt at the bars of a grated window, praying with the men inside.
Led by Fireman Larkin of Engine Company No 20, the little squad of smoke-eaters hacked away at the steel bars of the huge door, alternately dodging stone blocks and burning timbers, until at last Larkin, almost exhausted, sawed through one of the bars so that it could be dragged to one side by a file of men with a heavy rope. Then regardless of danger, the firemen pushed their way into the vault and lifted Giblin and the watchman out onto the street. They were taken over to the first-aid station set up by the ambulance surgeons in the lobby of the Trinity Building and then removed to the Hudson Street Hospital, where it was said that Giblin might not recover.
As soon as it was seen that the adjoining buildings were in great danger, Chief Kenlon tapped in the borough call. This is the first time in the history of the department, according to the officials at Fire Headquarters, that the call has been sent in. It called for all of the Brooklyn companies, due on third alarm at Box No. [M] in that borough, to proceed to the fire in Manhattan. There responded to this call nine engine companies, four trucks, one water tower, ten battalion chiefs, and one deputy-chief. This made the working force fighting the blaze 31 engines, 10 trucks, 3 water towers, 5 fuel wagons, 1 searchlight, 20 battalion chiefs, 2 deputy chiefs, and 1 chief.
RATTLE IN THE AIR.
This force was distributed by Chief Kenlon to points of vantage in the surrounding skyscrapers, from which tons of water were thrown in to the gridiron of the Equitable building, while all other property in danger was kept "washed down." From the Broadway side the Hamas was fought from the office buildings opposite. On the Nassau Street side the firemen were stationed on the Fourth National Bank building with lines of hose. From the top of the Schermerhorn building, on the Cedar Street side, the firemen also directed their lines, while on the Pine Street side the point of vantage was the Chase National Bank building.
In the square space in the " L" of the Equitable building at the corner of Nassau and Cedar Streets is an office building occupied by W. A. Read Co., bankers. In this building are also the offices of August Belmont. A great deal of damage was done to this structure, especially by water, and it was only after the hardest kind of a fight that the complete destruction of the building was prevented. During the fire Mr. Belmont tried to go to his office, but was prevented by a policeman.
STONE BLOCKS CRUMBLED.
By nine o'clock the fire had gained such proportions that it was evident to all that the building could not possibly be saved. The whole interior of the great rambling structure was ablaze. One could not understand how such a pile of granite could burn so fiercely. It was as if the structure had been built of pitch-pine. Whatever inflammable stuff there was in the many rooms caught fire at once, and the stone seemed to crumble and melt under the caustic touch of the flames.
The firemen were exposed to the greatest danger at this period of the fire, and many of them were hurt by falling debris, exactly how many could not be determined. It was considered highly probable that a number had been lost, as no recall had been held, and the majority of the battalion chiefs and captains had only the vaguest idea as to the whereabouts of their men. One officer, Lieut. Humphries of Truck No. 1, was injured by a stone falling from the coping, and was removed to company headquarters in an ambulance.
Great sections of the cornice and ornamental works on the roof became detached from all four sides of the building and toppled over into Broadway, Cedar, and [Fine] Streets. From the windows of some of the taller skyscrapers around the Equitable building, especially on the western side, which was free from smoke, one could look down upon its gridiron mass and into a cauldron of smoke and flames, from which at frequent intervals came the crash of falling floors and the battering roar of undermined partition walls as they tottered and fell. It was positively dangerous to walk past the building in the narrow streets that surrounded it. The firemen moved in consent danger, and they refused to allow any except policemen to share their risk.
Gustavo Peterson, the day watchman, who was rescued from the basement, told the firemen that he thought there were a number of other employees trapped in the building. He said that he and some others arrived at the building after the fire had started, and that they had gone inside, thinking that the firemen would soon have the fire under control. There were at least eight night watchmen in the building at this time, according to him, and he and the other day men had not yet relieved them.
Peterson and a negro named Lee Delt were taken out through a hole in the sidewalk. They had gone down to the basement to change their clothes, so confident were they that the whole excitement would be over in a few moments. But while they were downstairs the ceiling of the basement suddenly collapsed, and they were forced to run into the vault extension under the sidewalk. There they found a pole and commenced to break the little glass disks which form the vault roof. This attracted the attention of firemen in the street, who took axes and smashed in a whole section of the sidewalk, making a hole big enough to draw the two men through. Both were on the verge of a collapse, as much from fright as anything else, although they had not been any too fortunate in the matter of air
Lieut. Hart of the First Precinct, with Patrolmen Crotler and Johnson, tried to enter the building to look for the missing watchmen. but they made little headway where even the trained firemen had been obliged to fall back. On their retreat the two patrolmen were injured by falling stone, so were removed to the street with difficulty. Both were sent to the Hudson Street Hospital.
THE BRONZE HYDE STATUTE.
One of the features of the fire that attracted a great deal of interest throughout the financial district was the fate that must have befallen the bronze statue of Henry B. Hyde, which stood in the lobby facing the Broadway entrance. The owners of the building recently expended about $60,000 in renovating this lobby, and making it bright and cheerful, rather than the place of gloom it used to be. It was fitted out with stained glass and concealed electric lamps, that shed a soft light over the interior. Booths and shops of many kinds lined the sides, and the place was noted as a lounge during the luncheon hour.
In the midst of all this luxury stood the plain statue of Hyde, the founder of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, under whose leadership it attained its highest estate. After his death, control of the Society went to the son, James Hazen Hyde. during whose regime the insurance scandals arose that culminated in the Hughes investigation in this State, the departure of Hyde to France, and the sale of Hyde's controlling share to the company to Thomas F. Ryan, and subsequently to J P. Morgan, whose property they now are.
EQUITABLE'S 0WN REC0RDS
Most Important Safe [1st H u n B a l l d -|B»T T«>.* . o v a r y 4 n r t r n .]
As soon as he learned of the destruction of the Equitable Life Assurance Society building. Superintendent of Insurance Hotchkiss communicated with officials of the Society for the purpose of ascertaining if the records had been saved.
He was much gratified to learn that most of the vital records were kept in the branch offices of the Society in the Hasen building, a twelve-story structure at the corner of Greenwich and Albany Streets. The Hasen building, which is a fireproof affair, was eroded about five years ago to provide a safe place for the records.
"The records of the Equitable or any large Insurance company." said Mr. Hotchkiss. "are of inestimable value, and probably could never be replaced. It is fortunate that most of them have been saved from destruction."
According to an official of the Equitable, all such records, such as the record of policies, medical records, and, in fact, all the essential records of the Society, can be found in the several storerooms in the Hasen building. In the Hasen building are also the quarters of the medical department, with all the records of that division; the accounting and auditors' offices, with all the enumerable books and records at these departments.
Arrangements have been made for temporary quarters for the executive offices of the Equitable in the [Olty] Investing building. No. [ ] Broadway. where the company will transact its business until permanent quarters can be secured. A conference of the officials was held at the Hasen building, at Greenwich and Albany Streets, to get an idea of the extent of the loss suffered from the fire and to discuss plans for the future In all probability, a building committee will be appointed within a few days, so that rebuilding at the present site can be begun as soon as possible, or a new location arranged for.
According to Cage Tarbell, one of the directors of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, the loss will not exceed between [1200.000 and $260,000] This loss is sustained through the destruction of office furniture, fixtures, etc., plus the cost of clerical hire, which will be necessary to copy from duplicate records now i n f e ct in the Hasen building those records which were destroyed by fire in the home office building.
Over 80 percent of the records of the Society, he says, were kept in the [Listen] building, located in Albany Street, and all the records that were maintained in the main office were also held in duplicate form in the annex building of the Society. Known as the Hasen building. According to Mr. Tarbell, real estate experts estimate that the land was worth about [$12,000,000] more with the building off of it than with it standing, because it would cost almost that to remove it.
After the conference of directors of the Equitable in the Hagen building, the following statement to the policyholders was issued this afternoon:
"The burning of the home office building at No. 130 Broadway will cause but temporary inconvenience in the transaction of our business. The securities and important records are protected by fireproof vaults, which are intact. Most of the office force and records were removed some time ago to the Society's new building. No. [ ] Albany Street.
"Executive offices of the Society and the cashier's department have been established in the City Investment building, No. [ ] Broadway. The Society will occupy the second, third, and fourth floors of that building. This will be for the time being the home office of the Society, where all business with the public will be transacted, including the receipt of premium payments."
LEGAL PAPERS WERE BURNED.
[R a i l r o a d ' . C S M , Al saewt C a a t a l a t a d , H a d t . • • A d j a a r w . d .]
There was an echo of the Equitable fire at a hearing before the Public Service Commission today on an application of the New York and North Shore Traction Company for authority to issue $11,600,000 in bonds and $771,412 in new stock.
All of the testimony had been put in at previous hearings, and it was intended to have argument heard by the entire commission. But Edward If. Baasett himself formerly a member of the commission, who appeared as counsel for the company, said that some delay was inevitable, in as much as certain papers, including the certificate of consent of stockholders to the mortgage, had been burned in the Equitable fire. These papers can all be replaced in a few days. The papers were in the office of a lawyer for the company, James A. [MacElhittny,] who had rooms, on the seventh floor. The matter was adjourned until January IS.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Records Show Delay At Equitable Fire,
January 20, 1912, New York Times, "Records Show Delay At Equitable Fire,"
High-Pressure System Not Called Into Use for an Hour, Though Johnson Said Otherwise
Chief Kenlon Is Silent Declines to Discuss the Case---Commissioner Also Refuses Now --- Relief Funds Grow
Records of the Water Department disclosed yesterday that the high=pressure sustem was not used at the Equitable Building fire on Tuesday of last week until the forth alarm had been sent in, or after the fire had been burning over an hour.
Fire Commissioner Johnson said a few days ago, in defending Chief Kenlon and the entire department from charges made in The Evening Post of delay in handling the fire, that even though there had been an interval of twenty-one minutes between the sending of the first and second alarms, the number of high-pressure hydrants used on the first alarm was the equivalent to the extra apparatus which the second alarm would have brought.
The fire started at aabout 5:15 a.m., and the first alarm, because of the act of the Equitable watchmen in trying to fight it unaided, was not turned in until 5:34 a.m. Between 5:34 and 5:55, when the second alarm was puklled, the fire was being fought, according to Commissioner Johnson's statement, "with four companies and the high-pressure streams."
The records show, however, that the high pressure was not turned on until 6:23 a.m. At the department's office it was said that not until that hour had the pumping station been ordered to turn on the water. From 6:23 a.m. on the morning of Jan. 9, the high pressure remained on until 4:37 p.m. on the evening of the 12th. According to these records, therefore, the third alarm, at 6:01, and the fourth, at 6:03, were sounded before any call was put in for the high pressure and the fifth alarm, at 6:28, was sounded five minutes after the high-pressure alarm. From the time the first alarm was sounded to the time the high pressure was turned on was an interval of forty-nine minutes. During that time eighteen engines and five trucks had been called to the fire.
Deputy Water Commissioner Bennett explained yesturday how the Water Supply Department checked up fire alarms aas well as calls for the high pressure.
"In the pumping stations, where the high pressure is generated," he said, "every fire alarm in the city is recorded just as it is recorded at Fire Headquarters. If an alarm from one of the boxes in the high-pressure districts comes in the engineer in charge immediately turns on the engine pumps and raises the pressure to 125 pounds.
"The box where the alarm was sounded for the Equitable fire is at Pine and Nassau Streets, just outside the high-pressure zone, which extends east of nassau Street and north of Maiden Lane. This alarm, though outside the high-pressure zone, was recorded just as all others are, but the high pressure was not turned on, for the engineer in charge, under these circumstances, is allowed to turn it on only in response to an official request from the chief officer at the fire.
"At 6:23 the request came over the department's special telephone from Chief Kenlon. The pumps were immediately turned on and the pressure kept up to 125 pounds."
When asked specifically if by some chance the high pressure could not have been turned on before 6:23, the Deputy Commissioner said:
"Sometimes it may happen that there is a fire in the high-pressure district at the same time that there is one outside of it, in which a request from the Chief at the second fire would not be necessary. But in this case there was no such other fire. There was no high-pressure until 6:23 o'clock."
Fire Commissioner Johnson, when asked yesturday afternoon what he had to say in reply to the statement from the Water Department contradicting his own statement, said:
"I have nothing to say."
"Are the charges unfounded?"
"I have nothing to say."
Chief Kenlon was seen at his home, 44 Morton Street, last night. He had not heard of the new development in the controversy growing out of the first charges of delay in fighting the fire, he said. When a reporter handed him a copy of yesterday's Evening Post containing an account of the case, he looked at it and then said:
"I have nothing to say."
"Do you deny the charges?"
"I deny nothing," he said, "I simply have nothing to say."
Forty men continued the search in the Equitable ruins all last night for the body of Frank J. Neider, the missing watchman. The digging was confined near the vaults of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, from which many additional securities had been taken during the day. A huge pile of debris near the rear of the vaults is being reduced rapidly, and it is at the bottom of this debris that the body is expected to be found.
Benjamin Strong, Chairman of the committee collecting benefit subscriptions from tenants of the Equitable Building, reported yesterday that $89,788 had been collected. Among the subscribers are the Mutual Life Insurance Company for $10,000, and the National Exchange, National Bank, the Union Pacific Railway Company, and the Southern Pacific Company, each for $5,000.
J.P. Morgan & Co., collectors for the proposed new relief fund for the benefit of the members of both the Fire and Police Departments, reported total collections yesterday amounting to $34,043. Among the new subscribers are the National Park Bank, for $2,500; Speyer & Co., $1,500, and the United States Mortgage and Trust Company, for $1,000.
High-Pressure System Not Called Into Use for an Hour, Though Johnson Said Otherwise
Chief Kenlon Is Silent Declines to Discuss the Case---Commissioner Also Refuses Now --- Relief Funds Grow
Records of the Water Department disclosed yesterday that the high=pressure sustem was not used at the Equitable Building fire on Tuesday of last week until the forth alarm had been sent in, or after the fire had been burning over an hour.
Fire Commissioner Johnson said a few days ago, in defending Chief Kenlon and the entire department from charges made in The Evening Post of delay in handling the fire, that even though there had been an interval of twenty-one minutes between the sending of the first and second alarms, the number of high-pressure hydrants used on the first alarm was the equivalent to the extra apparatus which the second alarm would have brought.
The fire started at aabout 5:15 a.m., and the first alarm, because of the act of the Equitable watchmen in trying to fight it unaided, was not turned in until 5:34 a.m. Between 5:34 and 5:55, when the second alarm was puklled, the fire was being fought, according to Commissioner Johnson's statement, "with four companies and the high-pressure streams."
The records show, however, that the high pressure was not turned on until 6:23 a.m. At the department's office it was said that not until that hour had the pumping station been ordered to turn on the water. From 6:23 a.m. on the morning of Jan. 9, the high pressure remained on until 4:37 p.m. on the evening of the 12th. According to these records, therefore, the third alarm, at 6:01, and the fourth, at 6:03, were sounded before any call was put in for the high pressure and the fifth alarm, at 6:28, was sounded five minutes after the high-pressure alarm. From the time the first alarm was sounded to the time the high pressure was turned on was an interval of forty-nine minutes. During that time eighteen engines and five trucks had been called to the fire.
Deputy Water Commissioner Bennett explained yesturday how the Water Supply Department checked up fire alarms aas well as calls for the high pressure.
"In the pumping stations, where the high pressure is generated," he said, "every fire alarm in the city is recorded just as it is recorded at Fire Headquarters. If an alarm from one of the boxes in the high-pressure districts comes in the engineer in charge immediately turns on the engine pumps and raises the pressure to 125 pounds.
"The box where the alarm was sounded for the Equitable fire is at Pine and Nassau Streets, just outside the high-pressure zone, which extends east of nassau Street and north of Maiden Lane. This alarm, though outside the high-pressure zone, was recorded just as all others are, but the high pressure was not turned on, for the engineer in charge, under these circumstances, is allowed to turn it on only in response to an official request from the chief officer at the fire.
"At 6:23 the request came over the department's special telephone from Chief Kenlon. The pumps were immediately turned on and the pressure kept up to 125 pounds."
When asked specifically if by some chance the high pressure could not have been turned on before 6:23, the Deputy Commissioner said:
"Sometimes it may happen that there is a fire in the high-pressure district at the same time that there is one outside of it, in which a request from the Chief at the second fire would not be necessary. But in this case there was no such other fire. There was no high-pressure until 6:23 o'clock."
Fire Commissioner Johnson, when asked yesturday afternoon what he had to say in reply to the statement from the Water Department contradicting his own statement, said:
"I have nothing to say."
"Are the charges unfounded?"
"I have nothing to say."
Chief Kenlon was seen at his home, 44 Morton Street, last night. He had not heard of the new development in the controversy growing out of the first charges of delay in fighting the fire, he said. When a reporter handed him a copy of yesterday's Evening Post containing an account of the case, he looked at it and then said:
"I have nothing to say."
"Do you deny the charges?"
"I deny nothing," he said, "I simply have nothing to say."
Forty men continued the search in the Equitable ruins all last night for the body of Frank J. Neider, the missing watchman. The digging was confined near the vaults of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, from which many additional securities had been taken during the day. A huge pile of debris near the rear of the vaults is being reduced rapidly, and it is at the bottom of this debris that the body is expected to be found.
Benjamin Strong, Chairman of the committee collecting benefit subscriptions from tenants of the Equitable Building, reported yesterday that $89,788 had been collected. Among the subscribers are the Mutual Life Insurance Company for $10,000, and the National Exchange, National Bank, the Union Pacific Railway Company, and the Southern Pacific Company, each for $5,000.
J.P. Morgan & Co., collectors for the proposed new relief fund for the benefit of the members of both the Fire and Police Departments, reported total collections yesterday amounting to $34,043. Among the new subscribers are the National Park Bank, for $2,500; Speyer & Co., $1,500, and the United States Mortgage and Trust Company, for $1,000.
$18,000,000 Equitable Building Destroyed by Fatal Fire,
January 10, 1912, New York Times, "$18,000,000 Equitable Building Destroyed by Fatal Fire,"
Fast Sweeping Blaze in New York's Financial Zone Razes City's First Skyscraper Causing Loss of Life.
APPEALING HANDS IN RUIN
Reach Out in Vain Appeal from Ice-Clad Debris Where Others Are Buried.
Fire Chief Walsh Gone
Sinks with Floor After Sending Men of His Company to Safety.
BILLIONS IN THE VAULTS.
All Securities Probably Safe -- Equitable Counts Building No Loss -- Plans to Rebuild.
Safe Deposit Company President Saved After Two Hours -- Priest a Rescuer.
FIRE STARTED IN THE CAFE
Costly Delay in Sending an Alarm -- Lawyer's Club Loss Heavy -- Tenants Find New Quarters.
All but the outer walls of the Equitable Life Assurance Society Building at 120 Broadway was destroyed yesterday morning by a fire that grew from a small blaze in the basement to one of the most memorable in the history of the city. It was discovered about 5 A.M. by employees within the building, who for half an hour trusted to their own powers to conquer a fire that the full department forces of Manhattan, aided by reinforcements from Brooklyn, did not have under control until 9:30.
In that interval devastation was done that is now estimated at $2,000,000, the building that originally cost $18,000,000 being considered no asset, and at least six lives were lost. There were probably more, but the full ruin of the building was still all but impenetrable. Darkness settled on a structure in ice with the blaze of the timbers within still red.
The fighting of the fire was marked by act after act of heroism and in the fiercest of the fighting Battalion Fire Chief Walsh lost his life. Repeated attempts to find his body were made, but the faint hope that he had escaped by some miracle died in the early hours.
Fire in the Heart of Big Business.
The fire gripped a whole block in the part of Manhattan that is given over to big business and tall buildings, and destroyed the homes of Equitable Life Society, the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, of Kountze Brothers, bankers; the Lawyers' Club, and of many professional men.
Its basement housed vaults in which were deposited several billion dollars in securities, stocks, and bonds. These, it is believed, were untouched, but they were beyond the reach of hands as well as flames, to the embarrassment and inconvenience of the whole financial district.
The owners of the building carried no insurance for it, and their tenants have their losses covered only slight degree. An estimate of the total insurance at $50,000 was considered generous. A quarter of a century ago the Equitable was looked upon as one of the show buildings of New York, and in that day and generation it passed for fireproof. The tradition survived through a day of higher standards in fire prevention. The wreck of the building itself is not lamented by the owners, who had planned to rebuild, but the destruction of the Lawyers' Club and the wiping out of the rich law library bulk large in the $2,000,000 loss.
The financial district showed itself recuperative, and business pushed doggedly on its way, the homeless institutions finding temporary quarters and the Equitable proceeding unperturbed to the Hazen Building, where much of its business has been transacted for two years.
Handicap of Cold and Ice.
It was the bitter cold and the high wind that marked the fire as a fearful thing from the firemen's point of view. With the mercury sinking below the twenties and the wind stiffening to a sixty-mile-an-hour gale, Chief Kenlon led a desperate resistence to this the first big fire that he has had to meet since Chief Croker went out.
Ice seemed to form in the very air. It clogged the apparatus, rooting the pieces to the frozen streets. It settled in cloaks over the men themselves, so that they had to be chopped and thawed out from time to time that they might go one with the work.
And it settled over the building in a gleaming sheath of white that made the fire a wonderful thing to see. Ice converted the ruined building into a fantastic palace, with the rainbows arching at every turn as the sunlight filtered through the spray and smoke. Last night the shifting shafts from the searchlight of the Singer Building tower took up their task of adding mystic glamor to the horror.
And of all the spectacles that kept crowds staring fascinated from opposite streets and windows the strangest was that of two despairing hands---a dead man's hands thrust through the bars from one of the basement vaults. It was all of the man that could be seen, and as the afternoon drew to a close the ice mound on the pavement grew layer by layer, til even the hands were hidden from view.
When the Fire Started.
The Equitable's big clock, that has been one of the landmarks of lower Broadwat for so many years, showed that it was 5:20 o'clock yesterday morning when Sergt. Casey and Policeman Foley of the John Street Station passed by. It was freezing cold and Broadway was as old Trinity Cemetery across the street. Suddenly a man on his way to work came running into Broadway from Pine Street and, seeing the policemen, shouted to them that there was a fire in the Equitable Building.
Casey and Foley ran around into Pine Street, and about half way down that street from Broadway, on the ground floor, they found the fire. It was in the part of the building occupied by the Cafe Savarin, in a kitchen and storeroom that adjoins the elevator shaft. Apparently it had started in a pile of rubbish, from a cause not yet determined. William Davis, the Chief Engineer of the Equitable Building, and a score of other employees of the building were fighting the blaze with lines of hose running from the standpipes in the building.
The police say that Davis told them that he and the force of electricians, cleaners, firemen, etc. at his command could handle the fire, but the police took a different view of the situation, and Casey told Foley to turn in an alarm. Within five minutes the clanging of the fire apparatus could be heard.
When Deputy Chief Binns, who came with the first of the fire fighters, saw the blaze, which by then had eaten its way into the elevator shaft, he instinctively realized that the department had a hard battle ahead. Binns acted quickly. He ordered a second alarm, and then a thrid.
Building Quickly Doomed.
Even while he was turning in these alarms thew fire was licking its way into the vitals of the burning building. Not more than ten minutes had passed since the first alarm had been sent in by Foley, yet the fire had found its way into the elevator shaft and the Equitable Building was doomed.
The building covered practically the entire block that was bounded by Broadway, Cedar, Pine and Nassau Streets. Init were the general offices of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, the splendid clubrooms of the Lawyers' Club, and the offices and vaults of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, offices of the Union Pacific, and scores of offices of lawyers and other professional men. In two hours only the walls of the building was left. The Equitable Trust Company Annex and the Read Building, which occupied an "L" of the Equitable, were also damaged.
It was bitter cold, and the water that the firemen were throwing into the building and on adjoining structures quickly froze, and within an hour Broadway for a block in both directions was a lake of ice that was six inches or more deep everywhere. Engines and trucks were coated with ice, hose was frozen stiff, water towers became pyramids of white crystals, all of which , though picturesque, added to the odds against which the hard-working firemen had to contend.
The second alarm brought Fire Chief Kenlon, just up from his bed, where for weeks he had suffered from a fractured foot, received in another stubborn fire. It was the first big fire that Kenlon has had to handle since he succeeded Edward F. Croker as Chief
"This is a tough one, sure," said Kenlon, as he looked into the raging furnace which the Equitable Building had become by then.
Forced to Ask Brooklyn's Aid.
Fire Commissioner Johnson arrived at about the same time as Kenlon, which was about 6 A.M., and he was with the Chief when he turned in a fourth, and then a fifth alarm, and a moment later, for the first time in the history of the department, Kenlon sent a call to Brooklyn for help to fight a Manhattan fire.
It was then about 6:30 o'clock. The police were notified that the Brooklyn Bridge was to be used by the apparatus from Brooklyn, and Police Commissioner Waldo, who had taken personal command of the police in the fire zone, issued orders to the Bridge Squad to keep the bridge clear for the nine engines, four trucks, one water tower, one searchlight engine, and the engine tenders that were to pass over the bridge. With the Brooklyn apparatus came Chief Lally of that borough, two Deputies, and nine Battalion Chiefs.
All traffic was suspended on the north roadway of the bridge as the apparatus was being rushed over the river. The long line of engines and trucks, each engine spitting fire and trailed by ribbons pf black smoke, was one of the most thrilling sights the city has seen in many a day.
While the Brooklyn firemen were hurrying to the aid of their Manhattan comrades the later were performing deeds that will live in the annals of the department as among the most daring and heroic in that long list of heroic deeds.
Self-Trapped on the Roof.
In the very first stages of the fire, when the flames were still confined to the length of the building facing on Broadway, three men, believed either to have been night employees for the Equitable Company or kitchen employees in the Cafe Savarin, finding escape by way of Broadway impossible, went to the roof of the building on the elevator. This was shortly after 6 o'clock. They were seen running wildly from one side of the building to the other, but nowhere were there any ladders by which they could descend from the roof.
Chief Kenlon saw them and issued general orders to have them brought down. The extension ladders were hoisted, but these fell short by three stories. All the time the men were yelling in a tongue which no one seemed to understand, but it was obvious that the heat had already come up to the roof. Additional scaling ladders could not be used because the copings, extending out on the upper storied fully four feet, prevented. The firemen were seen frantically extending themselves over the roof's edge on the Cedar Street side.
Then Chief Kenlon sent four men to the tenth floor of the National Exchange Bank Building, directly across from the burning building at Cedar Street and Broadway. A window opened shortly on that floor and a life line shot forward over the narrow street from one of the line-shooting guns which the firemen had with them. The shot was a good one and the men caught the thin line and began hauling it in. They soon had hold of the heavy cable rope which was attached and were proceeding in tying one end of the rope to a steam funnel on the roof when the thick rope snapped like a cord. A sheet of flame from the fourth floor had whipped up under an apparent pressure from within the building and had burned the rope in a second.
Three Men Plunge to Death.
Heavy black smoke his the desperate men from view for fully a minute. When the haze cleared the men were seen crouching on the four-foot coping. The roof on which they had stood only a few moments ago had fallen entirely away. Still there seemed to be no flame where the men were, but even before the firemen from across the way could shoot another line one of the men was seen sliding, slowly but certainly losing his ground, and plunged into the fiery furnace behind him.
The other two held on only a few moments longer. It is probable that there was no other channel, for the heat was pressing them closer and closer to the coping's outer edge. They were seen to jump together, not into the fire, but clear of the coping and down into ice-covered Cedar Street. One of the men struck a ladder and bounced fully twenty feet. The other made a straight descent to the street.
"Too bad, too bad," sighed Fire Chaplain, Father McGean.
He reached the side of the men and administered the last rites in their few remaining moments of life. They were Italians, named John Sazzi and John Conti. No one could be found who knew them, and their bodies were taken to the Old Slip stattion.
From that instant, ith the spread of the flames to every part of the Equitable Building there were incidents on the four streets bounding the fire every moment.
The arrival at 6:30 o 'clock of William Giblin, President of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, which had its offices and vaults in the north end of the ground floor, precipitated what was probably the most dramatic scene and rescue of the day.
President Giblin Locked In.
President Giblin had been notified of the fire by a clerk in the Breslin Hotel and had made the trip in a taxicab. Despite the objections of the police he made his way to the Cedar Street entrance of the burning building. There is a heavy steel door at the entrance which locks with a spring lock. Mr. Giblin unlocked this door and forgot to take the key out of the keyhole. A watchman, whose name Mr. Giblin did not even know, accompanied him, and the door seeung shut on the two and locked itself.
It was dark on the ground floor, and Mr. Giblin and the watchman groped their way to the front of the building. No one missed them, apparently, for Cedar Street at that time in the morning was so dark that forms could be distinguished only vaguely, and the dangling, shining keys in the blackened steel door were forgotten or not even seen. There was little fire on the ground floor near the Cedar Street side at that time, but of smoke there was a great deal, and Mr. Giblin and his aid reached the Broadway windows with difficulty.
Within fifteen minutes after Mr. Giblin had entered the building there was a crash. A heavy safehad tumbled from an upper floor. The inrushing air brought the fire with it, and soon the ground floor was a mass of flames. Mr. Giblin, however, did not see this, for he had stepped into his big vault, big enough to conceal a company of men, and the door was keeping both flames and smoke from him. He was busily engaged looking for the papers which he had come to save. It was only when he had obtained what he wanted that he opened the door of the vault to retrace his steps. A rush of smoke almost overcame him instantly. He pulled the door behind him and realized that he was a prisoner. He glanced about for the watchman but did not see him. He knew then that his life, too, was only a matter of time, and he waited for that time.
The rumor spread outside that a well-dressed man who had entered the building had perished in the flames. Some said that his name was Gilbin, but the busy fire fighters soon forgot this incident, for there were other things which kept them alert every moment. It was stated by a watchman in the employ of the Cafe Savarin that eight men were asleep in the building somewhere, and these men had not been accounted for.
Walsh Calls for Volunteers.
Battalion Chief Walsh stepped forward and asked for volunteers to try and save the lives of all men still in the building. Fourteen men rushed at the opportunity. An extension ladder was raised to the fourth floor and the troop of fifteen, Chief Walsh leading, started up the ladder. At 7 A.M. the last of them was seen entering the window on the fourth floor.
They searched the fourth floor and found no sign of human life.
"We'll go down the stairs," said Chief Walsh to his men, "and search the third floor. Then we'l go to the second floor."
The firemen darted ahead and the Battalion Chief loitered a while on the fourth floor where something had attracted his attention. The fire was licking the fourth floor even as he loitered. There was also a rumbling sound as of crashing floors overhead.
"Go ahead, boys. I can take care of myself," the Chief's voice was heard through the smoke as he was trying to make his way down the stairs in the wake of his brave firemen.
There was a crash, followed by many other crashes, and by seething and whipping flames which made the fourth floor a furnace within a few moments. Walsh was last seen half way down on the stairs leading from the fourth floor to the third. Whether he tripped and fell or whether a part of the floor overhead fell down on him will perhaps never be known.
His men ran to the windows of the third floor on the extreme east, where there was least fire. They called for ladders, and one by one, until the count of fourteen was reached, Walsh's volunteers, with tears in their eyes, climbed down to the street.
"Have you seen Chief Walsh? Have you seen the Chief?" was asked of everyone, while the news was carried to Chief Kenlon and Fire Commissioner Johnson that the Battalion Chief was missing.
No one had seen him climb down a ladder. Joseph Brown of Truck 61, one of the men who had answered Chief Walsh's call for volunteers, was seen to tip Chief Kenlon on the arm and say to him:
Walsh Never Seen Again.
"Chief, he's gone. I know he's gone. He was still on the stairway when the floor began to give way. I heard him cry to go ahead, and that he was all right and could take care of himself, but he was hurt then, I;m sure. I think something struck him in the leg even before the floor gave way. Me and Capt. Bass, who was injured too, went back to the stairway and yelled the Chief's name, but we didn't get any reply except the noise of the flames. I'm afraid he's gone."
Chief Kenlon ordered a search for the battalion chief, and Battalion Chief Binns, with ten selected men, volunteered to go through the fourth floor. The search at best could not be thorough, for the fourth floor was like a furnace by that time. He and his men remained aloft for fifteen minutes and returned without the missing chief.
A fireman walking through Cedar Street at 8:30 A.M. discovered the keys which Mr. Giblin had unconsciously left behind him. He found that the door opened with the turn of the key. From within he thought he heard noises. He reported the matter and six firemen, under orders, entered by the Cedar Street entrance to investigate, pushing their way forward with the aid of a line of hose. Within a few Moments there was a tugging at the line and those behind knew that help was wanted inside. It came promptly and strong arms carried out three of the six firemen. They had been overcome by suffocating fumes and were bruised by falling grating. They were taken to the Hudson Street Hospital. Those who retained consciousness, however, admitted that they also thought they had heard a faint voice coming from near the Broadway windows on the ground floor.
It was recalled about this time that Mr. Giblen had not been heard from. The vaults, it was known, were in the northernmost wing, very near the Broadway windows, and the most hopeful advanced what at that time was the most problematical of vain hopes, that the faint cries might be those of Mr. Giblin.
Search for Mr. Giblin
Chief Kenlon ordered half a dozen streams to play directly on the vaults where the fire, at 8 o'’lock, was not nearly as hot as it was in the centre of the building. The windows on Broadway nearest the vaults were incased with burglar-proof steel bars, and these were so thickly coated with ice that there was barely room to play strema between them. The water spalshed until it rebounded to the west curb of Broadway, but when axes were used to break the ice the stream shot far into the interior of the ground floor.
When the section in which the vaults are located seemed sufficiently cooled to begin action at close range, two firemen, with steel saws, began sawing through the bars. Each bar measured fully half an inch in diameter, and it was 8:45 when the third bar gave way.
Twenty firemen pulled at a rope which was attached to the end of one of the disjointed bars and succeeded in twisting it fully sixty degrees out of plumb. The other two bars were similarly treated and the aperture then was large enough for a man’s body to slide through.
“I’m going in there first, said Father McGean, Chaplain of the firemen, who knows every brave fire fighter and who is as brave as the bravest.
Chief Devanney was in charge and objected to the Chaplain’s determination to go into the burning building. It was compromised then to let Chief Devanney go first. Father McGean, who weighs 250 pounds and is a powerfully built man, crawled after the Chief, his clerical robes dragging in the slush, to the door of the vault, which is about fifteen feet from the Braodway window.
The door was closed and just as the two men were about to pull it open they saw the form of a man lying about six feet awy, toward the interior of the building. A mass of wreckage covered part of his body.
“For God’s sake, save me,” plaintively cried the man.
Chop Wreckage from Him
The wreckage that covered him was mostly of iron frame work and yielded readily to the axe. While Chief Devanney was working with all his might Father McGean knelt by the side of the man who was believed to be dying.
Several firemen tugged the priest about the same time.
"Come out of here," they yelled, "the whole building is falling."
Father McGean was carried bodily to the Broadway window where he had entered. The chief and several men of the resuce squadron came behind him with the disable man. The man, already unconscious, was shoved through the aperture in the grating and the others had hardly made a like exit when there was a series of crashes and the sizzling of hot iron and the spot from which the man had been resuced was another heap of ruins.
"Why, it's Mr. Giblin," exclaimed Fire Commissioner Johnson, who was waiting outside the grating of the window.
It was Mr. Giblin and he was hurried to the Hudson street Hospital.
"I saw another man in there," said Father McGean to those who stood around him. "He was buried even more than Mr. Giblin. I am sure that he was dead for he did not even stir. I did not have time to reach him for the firemen did not think it would be safe for me. O, I shall never forget this. If I had administered the last rites to Mr. Giblin we might all have been buried. This is awful. It is the worst fire, I believe, that I have ever seen. First I saw those three men lose their lives on the roof. Then I saw this close escape of so many men. I shall never forget what I have seen and experienced.”
The spread of the news that Mr. Giblin had been found alive after being imprisoned amid the flames for two hours led to the hope that Battalion Chief Walsh might yet be saved. Chief Kenlon kept a steady stream of water playing into the fourth floor, that his men might be able to enter the building again when the fire should be extinguished, but the fire seemed only to be increasing in vigor every moment.
The rumor went the rounds at noon that Chief Walsh was in Gouverneur Hospital, where he had been quitely taken under a wrong name, as the mistake of an ambulance surgeon. An afternoon paper printed the story thus, and most people at the fire believed it was true. The report at least played a good role when Mrs. Walsh and her 18-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, came to the fire to ask about the missing Chief.
Tries to Cheer Mrs. Walsh
Chief Walsh's brother-in-law, who said he was a Captain in the United States Army, quieted the wife and daughter.
"See, here is an account of Chief Walsh’s rescue," he said, handing Mrs. Walsh the newspaper.
Mrs. Walsh wept for joy. Then she and her daughter were bundled into an automobile and hastned away, obviously on their way to the hospital.
Chief Walsh was not at the hospital, however. Many inquiries had come there for him, and always it was denied that he had been seen there.
Among the inquirers was Timothy F. Manning, Chief Walsh's driver. He ran all the way to the hospital from the scene of the fire, and, appearing at the desk, asked breathlessly:
"Have you got Chief Walsh here?"
"No," answered the clerk; "you’re the fiftieth one to ask that."
“I’ve lost him, I’ve lost him!” wailed Manning. He seemed dazed, and ran around the office as if crazed. Later he was found at Broadway and Cedar Street, acting hysterically and crying bitterly. He was taken to the Hudson Street Hospital and treated for hysteria.
No Help for Appealing Hands
The most ghastly incident of the day occurred late in the afternoon. When the icy and ghost-like hands of a man were seen stretched appealingly in the directions of the very windows on the Broadway side of the ground floor thorugh which Mr. Giblin’s rescuers had passed. The hands were within two feet of the window, and tons of wreckage had dropped in the path which Father McGean and the firemen took. Yet Father McGean is certain the hands were not there when he entered the building. Nor is it considered likely that they could have been those of the Italian who fell backward from the coping on the fourth floor at the first stages of the fire.
The left hand was held a little in advance of the right and could easily be reached from the window grating. All afternoon, even after the discovery of these hands, the firemen played streams of water over them. They did not bend even under this pressure. They merely seemed to glisten more in their iced encasement.
Some thought it was the watchman who went into the building with Mr. Giblin. It was suggested that it might be William Camplian, a watchman of the Mercantile Save Deposit Company, who is among the missing. Campian’s two daugherers, Eta, 18 years old, and Helen, 21, came to the scene of the fire early in the afternoon. They also went to the police stations in the neighborhood. They feared that their father had lost his life. The white hands near the windows had not been discovered when they left the scene in tears.
William Brown and Peter Donavan, firemen working on the Nassau Street side, fell on the ice in the early afternoon. Brown’s right arm was broken, and Donavan suffered a bad scalp wound. An ice splinter cut a long gash across the face of Samuel Diamond of Engine 17, and Patrick Healy of the same engine company was stunned by another splinter which struck him in the face.
John Roth of Engine 32 fell from a slippery window ledge two stories up. His led was broken, his back injured, and his head was cut. He, as well as the others, were taken to St. Gregory’s Hospital.
Charles Bass, captain of Engine 34, was taken to Hudson Street Hospital badly cut and burned after a fall on the ground floor of the ruins.
During the day there were many other injuries, none of them serious, but all of the ambulance doctors, as well as the twenty-five doctors from the White Cross Hospital in Brooklyn, who came in the Subway with their satchels, were busy tying up the wounds of the firemen.
Cuts His Way to Saftey
Leander Delk, an Equitable watchman, who was caught in the burning building, was rescued after he had cut his way from the basemen with a pick and a crowbar.
“When I reported for work this morning,” he said, “I found the men fighting a fire. At that time it did not look to be much of a blaze and I did not think the building was in danger. Then all of a sudden it got away from the men and I knew that it was going to be a hard one to handle. Suddenly, I don’t know how it happened, it was so quick, the walls began to fall, and Gustave Peterson, the day watchman, who was with me, and I ran for the stairway leading from the basement to the first floor. We were cut off, and like trapped rats we ran back and got into the vaults. The heat was something awful and the smoke was so thick that every minute I expected to be my last. Finally the firemen got to me and I was pulled out of the hole. They soon got Peterson out after me.”
How the Fire Was Fought
In the midst of the rescue work the Brooklyn apparatus arrived. The Manhattan firemen were then fighting the fire from every point where a stream could be played. The Equitable Building was then a mass of flames from basement to roof, and the walls seemed momentarily on the point of crumbling back into the ruins of the interior or into the streets.
The Brooklyn firemen were distributed at points of advantage on the surrounding skyscrapers, from the roofs and windows of which the firemen perhaps accomplished the best work. One of the strongest positions was the roof of the Clearing House, which was just high enough to make it possible to hurl several big streams into the very heart of the furnace which the Equitable had become. The roof of the Fourth National Bank in Nassau Street was another vantage point used by the firemen in keeping the fire in the Equitable and away from the nearby buildings. The roof of the Schermerhorn Building in Cedar Street was still another strategic point the firemen found use for, and the same was true of the Trinity Building at 115 Broadway; in fact, every building in the fire zone.
Little Loss to Belmont
One of the hardest fights, and a fight that was won, was the saving of the Read Building, which is in the “L” formed by the Equitable Building at Nassau and Cedar Streets, and the principal occupants of which are W. A. Read & Co., the bankers, and August Belmont.
The upper stories of this structure were badly damaged, but the firemen stayed the downward progress of the flames every time it seemed that the building would suffer the fate of the Equitable.
Mr. Belmont arrived at the scene of the fire early in the morning, and tried to get through the police lines, but a policeman blocked his way. Mr. Belmont argued and then pleaded, but the policeman assured him that his orders were strict, and that everybody, including the tenants of the buildings in the immediate neighborhood, would have to keep out until further notice. Mr. Belmont had to stay away, but was finally permitted to enter his offices when it was seen that the fire was under control. His offices and their valuable contents, among the latter several fine paintings and prints, were not damaged to any extent, according to the report given out later in the afternoon.
Another building that was in great danger was the Equitable Trust Company’s home on the southwest corner of Nassau and Pine Streets. The damage to that building was principally due to the water which was kept playing on it for hours. The books and records of the trust company were removed to the Hanover National Bank Building across the street.
By 8 o’clock the Equitable Building was only a shell. Its four masonry walls and the great iron doors fronting on Broadway were all that was left standing of the original structure.
But the ruins within the walls burned as fiercely as ever, and the contrary winds that prevailed made the firemen’s fight all the harder. But shortly after 9 o’clock they mastered the blaze, and at 9:30 Chief Kenlon announced that the fire was under control.
The shifting winds, however, made the withdrawal of any of the apparatus out of the question, and until after noon the debris within the wrecked building burned furiously, and every now and then a long tongue of flame would shoot up from the ruins while, the smoke, thick and black, poured upward in a steady cloud. Not until after 2 P.M. could the East River be seen from the Broadway window of the skyscrapers opposite the burned structure, so dense was the blanket of smoke that intervened.
At times the water pressure was so feeble that the streams did not reach the top of the Equitable’s famous iron doors. But fortunately this weakness came after the fire was under control.
Fire Dressed in Robes of Ice
It was the weather that made the fire not only one of the most terrible to fight in all the history of New York’s Fire Department, but cast over the whole scene a magical mangle of glistening white. Those hundreds that by hook or crook evaded the police lines and made their way within sight of the burning building saw a towering mass of ice. It seemed at first glance as though it could not be that within those coated walls a flame could live, and then here and there people watching from the frozen sidewalks or from the windows of the buildings across the way could see beyond the red of the fire still blazing.
This fire broke forth under conditions that stirred in old fire fighters the memory of the burning of the bag factory on South Street nearly ten years ago, when the men and the bulding were encased in ice. At 5 o’clock, a little before the fire was discovered, the mercury in the Weather Bureau registered 34 degrees. During the first fierce period of the fighting it sank, degree by degree, until at 9, a half hour before the fire was under contorl, it registered 23. By noon it had fallen to 19.
But this was not all, nor the worst, for a cutting northwest wind was blowing – a fearful blast, whipping across the business section at a rate of forty-four miles an hour. As the fire apparatus charged upon the burning building, and the men came hurrying to do battle with flames, this stiff wind had stiffened till by 9 o’clock it was a gale, sweeping and whistling through the caverns of the great building at sixty miles an hour.
At first the spectacle was as other fires – terrible, threateneing, a blaze showing fitfully through the windows and walls that later gave way, and over all a giant smuge of smoke that could be seen in the far sections of the city. But with the growing cold and the increased bitterness of the wind the ice came. It incrusted the building, it covered with a silvery film all the buldings around about, and the firemen themselves looked like fantastic figures from some fairy spectacle of the Far North.
With the coming of nightfall, the ice that had accumulated layer upon layer upon the sidewalk, rose into a mound of several feet.
Ice Shuts Out the Flames
By noon, the flames within the Equitable Building were invisible from the streets. One simply saw from Broadway a structure that had turned into a gleaming white. The noon sunlight, striking down thorugh the open space of Trinity Church yard, made it radiant. The pillars were enlarged and ghost-like like giant icicles, and around the Broadway entrance, the encrusted white was so thick that all the tracery and decorative carving was obliterated. There stood out with a new distinctiveness, however, the letters which proclaimed that within was the home of “The Equitable Life Assurance Society.” Something of the same covering was bestowed by the showering spray upon the buildings all about on Broadway, Pine, Cedar and Nassau streets, so that by noon-time, every horizontal line and every arch that beautifies the front elevation of the Fourth National was outlined in a frosted coating and the dome of the Clearing House was a gleaming mound. When the smoke cleared away and the steam and spray would shift, the scene suggested the spangled white of the Christmas cards.
But this same hand of Winter that cast a spell of beauty over the disaster made the whole section a fearful place for those whose business took them there yesterday, and a more than fearful place for the fire fighteres. These men had to be literally thawed out from time to time, when they would be so sheathed in ice that for all their dogged bravery to go on was not humanly possible.
At 9 o’clock Fire Chief Kenlon, who worked like a Trojan at this--his first great fire--was actually weighted down with icicles. They had formed on his eyebrows and hung from his mustache like dumbbells. From his shoulders and arms the men on the lines had to chop away the coat of ice. He looked like a man from another world. It was so with all the firemen whose work took them into the zone of the shifting spray, and it was soon found necessary to open relief stations in the entrances to the various office buildings which faced the building that was in flames. Here police and men detailed from the Fire Department bent over the half frozen men, pressing their stiff gloves onto the radiators, cutting, scraping, and chopping the ice from their helmets and hair and shoulders, and here and there furnishing them with the hot coffee for the glow to send them back to the hose and the wreck of the Equitable.
Scenes at the Fire
It was the coffee man who was treasured and hailed as the most welcome visitant of those hard hours. With his constantly refilled can – the milkman’s variety – he darted here and there, looming up now and then out of the smoke and mist, darting under the streams of the hose and coming unexpectedly from behind the ice mound that was once a useful piece of fire apparatus. Not only he, but volunteers, did this Good Samaritan work. More than one woman, heavily wrapped in furs, drove to the edge of the danger zone, showed to the police lines credentials in the form of coffee cans and boxes of sandwiches, and, armed with these, made their way to some corner whence the provisions might be dispensed.
One young woman, who declined to give her name, but who the small boy acting as her lieutenant called Miss Ducey, arrived early and stayed until dark, her stock of coffee and sandwiches contantly replenished. She took up her stand in the vestibule of the United States Realty Building, and there dealt out the warm drink to the frozen firemen who were led up to her by the policeman guarding the entrance. One of the Equitable’s officers took note of the work, wished he should share in it, and put $20 in her hand, a bill that soon added to the stores.
There were many such instances of help volunteered. One man saw a priest hurrying by with a coffee cup abrim in either hand.
“Are you selling those?” he asked.
“Of course not,” was the wondering rejoinder, and for answer, so the story runs, the man thrust two yellow bills at him and asked that he might thus help him to keep it up.
One of the girls who was dispensing refreshments in this fashion saw the figure of a big man, wrapped in a big coat that glistened with its covering of ice. He looked as though he had seen hard service in the fire, and she touched him on the arm.
"Have a sandwich, Chief?" she proffered.
"I am not a Chief," he answered, gently shaking his head; "I'm only a priest, and I – I do not think that I care to eat."
He had indeed seen hard service. The man was Father McGean.
Everything in Ice’s Grip
But it was not only the people that were hampered in their work by the ice that formed all about. It formed as well on the many pieces of fire apparatus, and several trucks, so placed as to catch the wind-driven streams where the hose was playing, were gradually rendered quite useless. Here and there stood trucks, so swathed in ice that it was hard to believe they had ever moved or would every move again. The ice that gripped and held one hose wagon on Broadway was, more than two feet thick in some places, and with the coming of darkness people within the building could hear the firemen outside chopping away and casting great chunks down on to the street.
The water tower that was reared on Nassau Street between Pine and Cedar was soon a stationary thing, its every cog and wheel lost from sight in the ice coating and embedded in a fast thickening foundation of ice. It was part of the street itself, it seemed, and the street itself was ice. The part of the street immediately in front of the destroyed buiding on Broadway all ice, so that the end of the asphalt and the beginning of the sidewalk was indistinguishable.
Not only the firemen themselves but the policemen who formed the fire lines but passers by were caught and coated with ice before they could get beyond reach of the spray that the wind kept ever whirling through the air. A messenger boy darted out of the doors of the Fourth National at noon and made his way north. To run that block was to make one’s way through an all-cloudy mist that shut out of sight of the buildings all around and made the street a ghostly place with long lines of shrouded hose to trip and stumble over. A block away, with the air clearer, the messenger boy stopped and found that ice had formed over his eyebrows and that his face and clothing were drenched. It was the experience of everyone, and silk hats fared no better than the messenger boy’s cap.
About 5 o’clock in the afternoon a sinister red gleam appeared on the very edge of Broadway, in the ground floor of the building. It showed with fitfully shifting brilliance behind a grating of iron bars all of them white. The firemen watched this fascinated, but to attack it was needless. It was the blazing of record books, papers, and accounts of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, stored there in vast quantities, out of reach, and threatening nothing else. Until late last night this was still a red glare matched by another that showed in the darkness from one of the highest remaining parts of the ruined structure.
How the Police Helped
A block beyond the burning square on all four sides was the line drawn by the police lines, maintained all day. This cordon was put into effect by Inspector Daly, Cahalane, and McClusky, who had in charge. 250 officers and patrolmen.
Pg. 3
They went over at the sound of the third alarm. Forty detectives were sent to the fire and to the surrounding district of disturbance to prevent sneak thievery. Last night Commissioner Waldo assigned 80 patrolmen in uniform and another forty detectives to keep the night watch. With the coming of 7 o’clock this morning the Traffic Squad will take charge of the vicinity. It is promised from Headquarters that every effort will be made to permit the usual business and street traffic to be resumed in the financial district.
Yesterday both were paralyzed. The police lines were tightly drawn, so that those who would pass had to show a police card or some excellent reason. Impatient silk-hatted folk were held back with eager newsboys, and one policeman was peculiarly obdurate to one woman spectator who held her lorgnettes poised to catch what glimpse she could from beyond the fire lines.
The traffic was badly prostrated. The surface line on Broadway was obviously and completely thrown out of business, but the fire unexpectedly halted even the subway trains for as much as half an hour in the morning. That was when it was feared that the sidewalk would cave in.
As for the trolley lines from the Battery to City Hall Park, there was no sign of life on them after daybreak, and the first interruption caused by the arrival of the fire fighters. Then, as the ice settled in a heavy coating over Broadway, it was plain that the few cars stranded further downtown were there for some time to come. Unless there was a marked change in temperature, there will have to be some hard chopping done to clear the tracks for use within the next few days. Yesterday all cars halted at Murray Street, the South Ferry ones switching there to the uptown tracks.
Great Throng of Onlookers
Despite the holdup in the Subway and absolute collapse of the trolleys, crowds poured into the stricken section all day long. Few stayed, for the police were not cordial, and only the most curious and hardy could withstand the cold and the wind and the wet for more than just long enough to take a glimpse. The arrival of the army of clerks at 9 blackened all the side streets with a pressing crowd, and throughout the day a glance at the windows of all surrounding skyscrapers suggested that within many an office business slackened yesterday. Yet in many institutions the work went relentlessly on, and the doorkeeper at the Fourth National Bank was surprised when he was asked if any clerks had been eye-witnesses of the fire. “They had to open the mail and get ready the exchanges,” he said in the voice of one who knows that banks wait for no fire.
As he spoke the bank was filled with the placid hum of routine business, yet the windows looked upon a ruined building, and Nassau Street in front was all but impassable, fire badge or no fire badge. It was that way all through the section yesterday, tremendous effort of rescue and alleviation going on amid scenes of destruction the while that ordinary business, hampered and blocked here and there, went on its unemotional, unpreoccupied way.
Kenlon Proud of His Men
Late in the afternoon Chief Kenlon came into the Trinity building and began to break the ice that formed a covering an inch thick on his big white helmet.
"It has been a great battle," he said. "It was made all the harder because of narrow streets, weather that approached the zero kind, and the fact that it was in an old building. The work of the men was superb and they never showed better than they did in keeping this fire in the building in which it started. I cannot say too much in praise of them, and I would be a strange man if I was not proud of them. As for poor Walsh he was a brave and able fireman, and now that it seems certain that he is lost I can only say that great as is my feeling of sorrow over his death, it must be a source of comfort to all who knew and loved him that he died like he did, in the heroic discharge of his duty."
At that hour the roof of the Equitable building was still on fire, and Chief Kenlon said that it would be several hours before a search could be started for the bodies of Walsh and others supposed to be in the ruins. And that night, working under the glare of search lights, the firemen of four hook and ladder companies began the search for the bodies. The ice which had formed in some places over a foot thick greatly hampered the firemen. It is uncertain in which of the ruins the body of the dead battalion chief is.
So high is the pile of destruction the building that the firemen who were making the search said last night that it would probably be some time today before they find Walsh's body.
Chief Kenlon, who was called to Brooklyn by two four-alarm fires last night, was back at the Equitable Building by 9 o'clock and after looking over the situation ordered the Trinity Building, 115 Broadway, which had been closed for the night, opened. He then sent a number of firemen in the building and ordered streams thrown from the roof of that building into the ruins of the Equitable Building.
Charles E. Knobluch, R. Lansburg, R. H. Mainzer, and H. H. Hallgarten of the Stock Exchange firm of Hallgarten & Co., 5 New Street, gave an order last night that food and hot coffee be served to the firemen and police at their expense.
Fast Sweeping Blaze in New York's Financial Zone Razes City's First Skyscraper Causing Loss of Life.
APPEALING HANDS IN RUIN
Reach Out in Vain Appeal from Ice-Clad Debris Where Others Are Buried.
Fire Chief Walsh Gone
Sinks with Floor After Sending Men of His Company to Safety.
BILLIONS IN THE VAULTS.
All Securities Probably Safe -- Equitable Counts Building No Loss -- Plans to Rebuild.
Safe Deposit Company President Saved After Two Hours -- Priest a Rescuer.
FIRE STARTED IN THE CAFE
Costly Delay in Sending an Alarm -- Lawyer's Club Loss Heavy -- Tenants Find New Quarters.
All but the outer walls of the Equitable Life Assurance Society Building at 120 Broadway was destroyed yesterday morning by a fire that grew from a small blaze in the basement to one of the most memorable in the history of the city. It was discovered about 5 A.M. by employees within the building, who for half an hour trusted to their own powers to conquer a fire that the full department forces of Manhattan, aided by reinforcements from Brooklyn, did not have under control until 9:30.
In that interval devastation was done that is now estimated at $2,000,000, the building that originally cost $18,000,000 being considered no asset, and at least six lives were lost. There were probably more, but the full ruin of the building was still all but impenetrable. Darkness settled on a structure in ice with the blaze of the timbers within still red.
The fighting of the fire was marked by act after act of heroism and in the fiercest of the fighting Battalion Fire Chief Walsh lost his life. Repeated attempts to find his body were made, but the faint hope that he had escaped by some miracle died in the early hours.
Fire in the Heart of Big Business.
The fire gripped a whole block in the part of Manhattan that is given over to big business and tall buildings, and destroyed the homes of Equitable Life Society, the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, of Kountze Brothers, bankers; the Lawyers' Club, and of many professional men.
Its basement housed vaults in which were deposited several billion dollars in securities, stocks, and bonds. These, it is believed, were untouched, but they were beyond the reach of hands as well as flames, to the embarrassment and inconvenience of the whole financial district.
The owners of the building carried no insurance for it, and their tenants have their losses covered only slight degree. An estimate of the total insurance at $50,000 was considered generous. A quarter of a century ago the Equitable was looked upon as one of the show buildings of New York, and in that day and generation it passed for fireproof. The tradition survived through a day of higher standards in fire prevention. The wreck of the building itself is not lamented by the owners, who had planned to rebuild, but the destruction of the Lawyers' Club and the wiping out of the rich law library bulk large in the $2,000,000 loss.
The financial district showed itself recuperative, and business pushed doggedly on its way, the homeless institutions finding temporary quarters and the Equitable proceeding unperturbed to the Hazen Building, where much of its business has been transacted for two years.
Handicap of Cold and Ice.
It was the bitter cold and the high wind that marked the fire as a fearful thing from the firemen's point of view. With the mercury sinking below the twenties and the wind stiffening to a sixty-mile-an-hour gale, Chief Kenlon led a desperate resistence to this the first big fire that he has had to meet since Chief Croker went out.
Ice seemed to form in the very air. It clogged the apparatus, rooting the pieces to the frozen streets. It settled in cloaks over the men themselves, so that they had to be chopped and thawed out from time to time that they might go one with the work.
And it settled over the building in a gleaming sheath of white that made the fire a wonderful thing to see. Ice converted the ruined building into a fantastic palace, with the rainbows arching at every turn as the sunlight filtered through the spray and smoke. Last night the shifting shafts from the searchlight of the Singer Building tower took up their task of adding mystic glamor to the horror.
And of all the spectacles that kept crowds staring fascinated from opposite streets and windows the strangest was that of two despairing hands---a dead man's hands thrust through the bars from one of the basement vaults. It was all of the man that could be seen, and as the afternoon drew to a close the ice mound on the pavement grew layer by layer, til even the hands were hidden from view.
When the Fire Started.
The Equitable's big clock, that has been one of the landmarks of lower Broadwat for so many years, showed that it was 5:20 o'clock yesterday morning when Sergt. Casey and Policeman Foley of the John Street Station passed by. It was freezing cold and Broadway was as old Trinity Cemetery across the street. Suddenly a man on his way to work came running into Broadway from Pine Street and, seeing the policemen, shouted to them that there was a fire in the Equitable Building.
Casey and Foley ran around into Pine Street, and about half way down that street from Broadway, on the ground floor, they found the fire. It was in the part of the building occupied by the Cafe Savarin, in a kitchen and storeroom that adjoins the elevator shaft. Apparently it had started in a pile of rubbish, from a cause not yet determined. William Davis, the Chief Engineer of the Equitable Building, and a score of other employees of the building were fighting the blaze with lines of hose running from the standpipes in the building.
The police say that Davis told them that he and the force of electricians, cleaners, firemen, etc. at his command could handle the fire, but the police took a different view of the situation, and Casey told Foley to turn in an alarm. Within five minutes the clanging of the fire apparatus could be heard.
When Deputy Chief Binns, who came with the first of the fire fighters, saw the blaze, which by then had eaten its way into the elevator shaft, he instinctively realized that the department had a hard battle ahead. Binns acted quickly. He ordered a second alarm, and then a thrid.
Building Quickly Doomed.
Even while he was turning in these alarms thew fire was licking its way into the vitals of the burning building. Not more than ten minutes had passed since the first alarm had been sent in by Foley, yet the fire had found its way into the elevator shaft and the Equitable Building was doomed.
The building covered practically the entire block that was bounded by Broadway, Cedar, Pine and Nassau Streets. Init were the general offices of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, the splendid clubrooms of the Lawyers' Club, and the offices and vaults of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, offices of the Union Pacific, and scores of offices of lawyers and other professional men. In two hours only the walls of the building was left. The Equitable Trust Company Annex and the Read Building, which occupied an "L" of the Equitable, were also damaged.
It was bitter cold, and the water that the firemen were throwing into the building and on adjoining structures quickly froze, and within an hour Broadway for a block in both directions was a lake of ice that was six inches or more deep everywhere. Engines and trucks were coated with ice, hose was frozen stiff, water towers became pyramids of white crystals, all of which , though picturesque, added to the odds against which the hard-working firemen had to contend.
The second alarm brought Fire Chief Kenlon, just up from his bed, where for weeks he had suffered from a fractured foot, received in another stubborn fire. It was the first big fire that Kenlon has had to handle since he succeeded Edward F. Croker as Chief
"This is a tough one, sure," said Kenlon, as he looked into the raging furnace which the Equitable Building had become by then.
Forced to Ask Brooklyn's Aid.
Fire Commissioner Johnson arrived at about the same time as Kenlon, which was about 6 A.M., and he was with the Chief when he turned in a fourth, and then a fifth alarm, and a moment later, for the first time in the history of the department, Kenlon sent a call to Brooklyn for help to fight a Manhattan fire.
It was then about 6:30 o'clock. The police were notified that the Brooklyn Bridge was to be used by the apparatus from Brooklyn, and Police Commissioner Waldo, who had taken personal command of the police in the fire zone, issued orders to the Bridge Squad to keep the bridge clear for the nine engines, four trucks, one water tower, one searchlight engine, and the engine tenders that were to pass over the bridge. With the Brooklyn apparatus came Chief Lally of that borough, two Deputies, and nine Battalion Chiefs.
All traffic was suspended on the north roadway of the bridge as the apparatus was being rushed over the river. The long line of engines and trucks, each engine spitting fire and trailed by ribbons pf black smoke, was one of the most thrilling sights the city has seen in many a day.
While the Brooklyn firemen were hurrying to the aid of their Manhattan comrades the later were performing deeds that will live in the annals of the department as among the most daring and heroic in that long list of heroic deeds.
Self-Trapped on the Roof.
In the very first stages of the fire, when the flames were still confined to the length of the building facing on Broadway, three men, believed either to have been night employees for the Equitable Company or kitchen employees in the Cafe Savarin, finding escape by way of Broadway impossible, went to the roof of the building on the elevator. This was shortly after 6 o'clock. They were seen running wildly from one side of the building to the other, but nowhere were there any ladders by which they could descend from the roof.
Chief Kenlon saw them and issued general orders to have them brought down. The extension ladders were hoisted, but these fell short by three stories. All the time the men were yelling in a tongue which no one seemed to understand, but it was obvious that the heat had already come up to the roof. Additional scaling ladders could not be used because the copings, extending out on the upper storied fully four feet, prevented. The firemen were seen frantically extending themselves over the roof's edge on the Cedar Street side.
Then Chief Kenlon sent four men to the tenth floor of the National Exchange Bank Building, directly across from the burning building at Cedar Street and Broadway. A window opened shortly on that floor and a life line shot forward over the narrow street from one of the line-shooting guns which the firemen had with them. The shot was a good one and the men caught the thin line and began hauling it in. They soon had hold of the heavy cable rope which was attached and were proceeding in tying one end of the rope to a steam funnel on the roof when the thick rope snapped like a cord. A sheet of flame from the fourth floor had whipped up under an apparent pressure from within the building and had burned the rope in a second.
Three Men Plunge to Death.
Heavy black smoke his the desperate men from view for fully a minute. When the haze cleared the men were seen crouching on the four-foot coping. The roof on which they had stood only a few moments ago had fallen entirely away. Still there seemed to be no flame where the men were, but even before the firemen from across the way could shoot another line one of the men was seen sliding, slowly but certainly losing his ground, and plunged into the fiery furnace behind him.
The other two held on only a few moments longer. It is probable that there was no other channel, for the heat was pressing them closer and closer to the coping's outer edge. They were seen to jump together, not into the fire, but clear of the coping and down into ice-covered Cedar Street. One of the men struck a ladder and bounced fully twenty feet. The other made a straight descent to the street.
"Too bad, too bad," sighed Fire Chaplain, Father McGean.
He reached the side of the men and administered the last rites in their few remaining moments of life. They were Italians, named John Sazzi and John Conti. No one could be found who knew them, and their bodies were taken to the Old Slip stattion.
From that instant, ith the spread of the flames to every part of the Equitable Building there were incidents on the four streets bounding the fire every moment.
The arrival at 6:30 o 'clock of William Giblin, President of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, which had its offices and vaults in the north end of the ground floor, precipitated what was probably the most dramatic scene and rescue of the day.
President Giblin Locked In.
President Giblin had been notified of the fire by a clerk in the Breslin Hotel and had made the trip in a taxicab. Despite the objections of the police he made his way to the Cedar Street entrance of the burning building. There is a heavy steel door at the entrance which locks with a spring lock. Mr. Giblin unlocked this door and forgot to take the key out of the keyhole. A watchman, whose name Mr. Giblin did not even know, accompanied him, and the door seeung shut on the two and locked itself.
It was dark on the ground floor, and Mr. Giblin and the watchman groped their way to the front of the building. No one missed them, apparently, for Cedar Street at that time in the morning was so dark that forms could be distinguished only vaguely, and the dangling, shining keys in the blackened steel door were forgotten or not even seen. There was little fire on the ground floor near the Cedar Street side at that time, but of smoke there was a great deal, and Mr. Giblin and his aid reached the Broadway windows with difficulty.
Within fifteen minutes after Mr. Giblin had entered the building there was a crash. A heavy safehad tumbled from an upper floor. The inrushing air brought the fire with it, and soon the ground floor was a mass of flames. Mr. Giblin, however, did not see this, for he had stepped into his big vault, big enough to conceal a company of men, and the door was keeping both flames and smoke from him. He was busily engaged looking for the papers which he had come to save. It was only when he had obtained what he wanted that he opened the door of the vault to retrace his steps. A rush of smoke almost overcame him instantly. He pulled the door behind him and realized that he was a prisoner. He glanced about for the watchman but did not see him. He knew then that his life, too, was only a matter of time, and he waited for that time.
The rumor spread outside that a well-dressed man who had entered the building had perished in the flames. Some said that his name was Gilbin, but the busy fire fighters soon forgot this incident, for there were other things which kept them alert every moment. It was stated by a watchman in the employ of the Cafe Savarin that eight men were asleep in the building somewhere, and these men had not been accounted for.
Walsh Calls for Volunteers.
Battalion Chief Walsh stepped forward and asked for volunteers to try and save the lives of all men still in the building. Fourteen men rushed at the opportunity. An extension ladder was raised to the fourth floor and the troop of fifteen, Chief Walsh leading, started up the ladder. At 7 A.M. the last of them was seen entering the window on the fourth floor.
They searched the fourth floor and found no sign of human life.
"We'll go down the stairs," said Chief Walsh to his men, "and search the third floor. Then we'l go to the second floor."
The firemen darted ahead and the Battalion Chief loitered a while on the fourth floor where something had attracted his attention. The fire was licking the fourth floor even as he loitered. There was also a rumbling sound as of crashing floors overhead.
"Go ahead, boys. I can take care of myself," the Chief's voice was heard through the smoke as he was trying to make his way down the stairs in the wake of his brave firemen.
There was a crash, followed by many other crashes, and by seething and whipping flames which made the fourth floor a furnace within a few moments. Walsh was last seen half way down on the stairs leading from the fourth floor to the third. Whether he tripped and fell or whether a part of the floor overhead fell down on him will perhaps never be known.
His men ran to the windows of the third floor on the extreme east, where there was least fire. They called for ladders, and one by one, until the count of fourteen was reached, Walsh's volunteers, with tears in their eyes, climbed down to the street.
"Have you seen Chief Walsh? Have you seen the Chief?" was asked of everyone, while the news was carried to Chief Kenlon and Fire Commissioner Johnson that the Battalion Chief was missing.
No one had seen him climb down a ladder. Joseph Brown of Truck 61, one of the men who had answered Chief Walsh's call for volunteers, was seen to tip Chief Kenlon on the arm and say to him:
Walsh Never Seen Again.
"Chief, he's gone. I know he's gone. He was still on the stairway when the floor began to give way. I heard him cry to go ahead, and that he was all right and could take care of himself, but he was hurt then, I;m sure. I think something struck him in the leg even before the floor gave way. Me and Capt. Bass, who was injured too, went back to the stairway and yelled the Chief's name, but we didn't get any reply except the noise of the flames. I'm afraid he's gone."
Chief Kenlon ordered a search for the battalion chief, and Battalion Chief Binns, with ten selected men, volunteered to go through the fourth floor. The search at best could not be thorough, for the fourth floor was like a furnace by that time. He and his men remained aloft for fifteen minutes and returned without the missing chief.
A fireman walking through Cedar Street at 8:30 A.M. discovered the keys which Mr. Giblin had unconsciously left behind him. He found that the door opened with the turn of the key. From within he thought he heard noises. He reported the matter and six firemen, under orders, entered by the Cedar Street entrance to investigate, pushing their way forward with the aid of a line of hose. Within a few Moments there was a tugging at the line and those behind knew that help was wanted inside. It came promptly and strong arms carried out three of the six firemen. They had been overcome by suffocating fumes and were bruised by falling grating. They were taken to the Hudson Street Hospital. Those who retained consciousness, however, admitted that they also thought they had heard a faint voice coming from near the Broadway windows on the ground floor.
It was recalled about this time that Mr. Giblen had not been heard from. The vaults, it was known, were in the northernmost wing, very near the Broadway windows, and the most hopeful advanced what at that time was the most problematical of vain hopes, that the faint cries might be those of Mr. Giblin.
Search for Mr. Giblin
Chief Kenlon ordered half a dozen streams to play directly on the vaults where the fire, at 8 o'’lock, was not nearly as hot as it was in the centre of the building. The windows on Broadway nearest the vaults were incased with burglar-proof steel bars, and these were so thickly coated with ice that there was barely room to play strema between them. The water spalshed until it rebounded to the west curb of Broadway, but when axes were used to break the ice the stream shot far into the interior of the ground floor.
When the section in which the vaults are located seemed sufficiently cooled to begin action at close range, two firemen, with steel saws, began sawing through the bars. Each bar measured fully half an inch in diameter, and it was 8:45 when the third bar gave way.
Twenty firemen pulled at a rope which was attached to the end of one of the disjointed bars and succeeded in twisting it fully sixty degrees out of plumb. The other two bars were similarly treated and the aperture then was large enough for a man’s body to slide through.
“I’m going in there first, said Father McGean, Chaplain of the firemen, who knows every brave fire fighter and who is as brave as the bravest.
Chief Devanney was in charge and objected to the Chaplain’s determination to go into the burning building. It was compromised then to let Chief Devanney go first. Father McGean, who weighs 250 pounds and is a powerfully built man, crawled after the Chief, his clerical robes dragging in the slush, to the door of the vault, which is about fifteen feet from the Braodway window.
The door was closed and just as the two men were about to pull it open they saw the form of a man lying about six feet awy, toward the interior of the building. A mass of wreckage covered part of his body.
“For God’s sake, save me,” plaintively cried the man.
Chop Wreckage from Him
The wreckage that covered him was mostly of iron frame work and yielded readily to the axe. While Chief Devanney was working with all his might Father McGean knelt by the side of the man who was believed to be dying.
Several firemen tugged the priest about the same time.
"Come out of here," they yelled, "the whole building is falling."
Father McGean was carried bodily to the Broadway window where he had entered. The chief and several men of the resuce squadron came behind him with the disable man. The man, already unconscious, was shoved through the aperture in the grating and the others had hardly made a like exit when there was a series of crashes and the sizzling of hot iron and the spot from which the man had been resuced was another heap of ruins.
"Why, it's Mr. Giblin," exclaimed Fire Commissioner Johnson, who was waiting outside the grating of the window.
It was Mr. Giblin and he was hurried to the Hudson street Hospital.
"I saw another man in there," said Father McGean to those who stood around him. "He was buried even more than Mr. Giblin. I am sure that he was dead for he did not even stir. I did not have time to reach him for the firemen did not think it would be safe for me. O, I shall never forget this. If I had administered the last rites to Mr. Giblin we might all have been buried. This is awful. It is the worst fire, I believe, that I have ever seen. First I saw those three men lose their lives on the roof. Then I saw this close escape of so many men. I shall never forget what I have seen and experienced.”
The spread of the news that Mr. Giblin had been found alive after being imprisoned amid the flames for two hours led to the hope that Battalion Chief Walsh might yet be saved. Chief Kenlon kept a steady stream of water playing into the fourth floor, that his men might be able to enter the building again when the fire should be extinguished, but the fire seemed only to be increasing in vigor every moment.
The rumor went the rounds at noon that Chief Walsh was in Gouverneur Hospital, where he had been quitely taken under a wrong name, as the mistake of an ambulance surgeon. An afternoon paper printed the story thus, and most people at the fire believed it was true. The report at least played a good role when Mrs. Walsh and her 18-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, came to the fire to ask about the missing Chief.
Tries to Cheer Mrs. Walsh
Chief Walsh's brother-in-law, who said he was a Captain in the United States Army, quieted the wife and daughter.
"See, here is an account of Chief Walsh’s rescue," he said, handing Mrs. Walsh the newspaper.
Mrs. Walsh wept for joy. Then she and her daughter were bundled into an automobile and hastned away, obviously on their way to the hospital.
Chief Walsh was not at the hospital, however. Many inquiries had come there for him, and always it was denied that he had been seen there.
Among the inquirers was Timothy F. Manning, Chief Walsh's driver. He ran all the way to the hospital from the scene of the fire, and, appearing at the desk, asked breathlessly:
"Have you got Chief Walsh here?"
"No," answered the clerk; "you’re the fiftieth one to ask that."
“I’ve lost him, I’ve lost him!” wailed Manning. He seemed dazed, and ran around the office as if crazed. Later he was found at Broadway and Cedar Street, acting hysterically and crying bitterly. He was taken to the Hudson Street Hospital and treated for hysteria.
No Help for Appealing Hands
The most ghastly incident of the day occurred late in the afternoon. When the icy and ghost-like hands of a man were seen stretched appealingly in the directions of the very windows on the Broadway side of the ground floor thorugh which Mr. Giblin’s rescuers had passed. The hands were within two feet of the window, and tons of wreckage had dropped in the path which Father McGean and the firemen took. Yet Father McGean is certain the hands were not there when he entered the building. Nor is it considered likely that they could have been those of the Italian who fell backward from the coping on the fourth floor at the first stages of the fire.
The left hand was held a little in advance of the right and could easily be reached from the window grating. All afternoon, even after the discovery of these hands, the firemen played streams of water over them. They did not bend even under this pressure. They merely seemed to glisten more in their iced encasement.
Some thought it was the watchman who went into the building with Mr. Giblin. It was suggested that it might be William Camplian, a watchman of the Mercantile Save Deposit Company, who is among the missing. Campian’s two daugherers, Eta, 18 years old, and Helen, 21, came to the scene of the fire early in the afternoon. They also went to the police stations in the neighborhood. They feared that their father had lost his life. The white hands near the windows had not been discovered when they left the scene in tears.
William Brown and Peter Donavan, firemen working on the Nassau Street side, fell on the ice in the early afternoon. Brown’s right arm was broken, and Donavan suffered a bad scalp wound. An ice splinter cut a long gash across the face of Samuel Diamond of Engine 17, and Patrick Healy of the same engine company was stunned by another splinter which struck him in the face.
John Roth of Engine 32 fell from a slippery window ledge two stories up. His led was broken, his back injured, and his head was cut. He, as well as the others, were taken to St. Gregory’s Hospital.
Charles Bass, captain of Engine 34, was taken to Hudson Street Hospital badly cut and burned after a fall on the ground floor of the ruins.
During the day there were many other injuries, none of them serious, but all of the ambulance doctors, as well as the twenty-five doctors from the White Cross Hospital in Brooklyn, who came in the Subway with their satchels, were busy tying up the wounds of the firemen.
Cuts His Way to Saftey
Leander Delk, an Equitable watchman, who was caught in the burning building, was rescued after he had cut his way from the basemen with a pick and a crowbar.
“When I reported for work this morning,” he said, “I found the men fighting a fire. At that time it did not look to be much of a blaze and I did not think the building was in danger. Then all of a sudden it got away from the men and I knew that it was going to be a hard one to handle. Suddenly, I don’t know how it happened, it was so quick, the walls began to fall, and Gustave Peterson, the day watchman, who was with me, and I ran for the stairway leading from the basement to the first floor. We were cut off, and like trapped rats we ran back and got into the vaults. The heat was something awful and the smoke was so thick that every minute I expected to be my last. Finally the firemen got to me and I was pulled out of the hole. They soon got Peterson out after me.”
How the Fire Was Fought
In the midst of the rescue work the Brooklyn apparatus arrived. The Manhattan firemen were then fighting the fire from every point where a stream could be played. The Equitable Building was then a mass of flames from basement to roof, and the walls seemed momentarily on the point of crumbling back into the ruins of the interior or into the streets.
The Brooklyn firemen were distributed at points of advantage on the surrounding skyscrapers, from the roofs and windows of which the firemen perhaps accomplished the best work. One of the strongest positions was the roof of the Clearing House, which was just high enough to make it possible to hurl several big streams into the very heart of the furnace which the Equitable had become. The roof of the Fourth National Bank in Nassau Street was another vantage point used by the firemen in keeping the fire in the Equitable and away from the nearby buildings. The roof of the Schermerhorn Building in Cedar Street was still another strategic point the firemen found use for, and the same was true of the Trinity Building at 115 Broadway; in fact, every building in the fire zone.
Little Loss to Belmont
One of the hardest fights, and a fight that was won, was the saving of the Read Building, which is in the “L” formed by the Equitable Building at Nassau and Cedar Streets, and the principal occupants of which are W. A. Read & Co., the bankers, and August Belmont.
The upper stories of this structure were badly damaged, but the firemen stayed the downward progress of the flames every time it seemed that the building would suffer the fate of the Equitable.
Mr. Belmont arrived at the scene of the fire early in the morning, and tried to get through the police lines, but a policeman blocked his way. Mr. Belmont argued and then pleaded, but the policeman assured him that his orders were strict, and that everybody, including the tenants of the buildings in the immediate neighborhood, would have to keep out until further notice. Mr. Belmont had to stay away, but was finally permitted to enter his offices when it was seen that the fire was under control. His offices and their valuable contents, among the latter several fine paintings and prints, were not damaged to any extent, according to the report given out later in the afternoon.
Another building that was in great danger was the Equitable Trust Company’s home on the southwest corner of Nassau and Pine Streets. The damage to that building was principally due to the water which was kept playing on it for hours. The books and records of the trust company were removed to the Hanover National Bank Building across the street.
By 8 o’clock the Equitable Building was only a shell. Its four masonry walls and the great iron doors fronting on Broadway were all that was left standing of the original structure.
But the ruins within the walls burned as fiercely as ever, and the contrary winds that prevailed made the firemen’s fight all the harder. But shortly after 9 o’clock they mastered the blaze, and at 9:30 Chief Kenlon announced that the fire was under control.
The shifting winds, however, made the withdrawal of any of the apparatus out of the question, and until after noon the debris within the wrecked building burned furiously, and every now and then a long tongue of flame would shoot up from the ruins while, the smoke, thick and black, poured upward in a steady cloud. Not until after 2 P.M. could the East River be seen from the Broadway window of the skyscrapers opposite the burned structure, so dense was the blanket of smoke that intervened.
At times the water pressure was so feeble that the streams did not reach the top of the Equitable’s famous iron doors. But fortunately this weakness came after the fire was under control.
Fire Dressed in Robes of Ice
It was the weather that made the fire not only one of the most terrible to fight in all the history of New York’s Fire Department, but cast over the whole scene a magical mangle of glistening white. Those hundreds that by hook or crook evaded the police lines and made their way within sight of the burning building saw a towering mass of ice. It seemed at first glance as though it could not be that within those coated walls a flame could live, and then here and there people watching from the frozen sidewalks or from the windows of the buildings across the way could see beyond the red of the fire still blazing.
This fire broke forth under conditions that stirred in old fire fighters the memory of the burning of the bag factory on South Street nearly ten years ago, when the men and the bulding were encased in ice. At 5 o’clock, a little before the fire was discovered, the mercury in the Weather Bureau registered 34 degrees. During the first fierce period of the fighting it sank, degree by degree, until at 9, a half hour before the fire was under contorl, it registered 23. By noon it had fallen to 19.
But this was not all, nor the worst, for a cutting northwest wind was blowing – a fearful blast, whipping across the business section at a rate of forty-four miles an hour. As the fire apparatus charged upon the burning building, and the men came hurrying to do battle with flames, this stiff wind had stiffened till by 9 o’clock it was a gale, sweeping and whistling through the caverns of the great building at sixty miles an hour.
At first the spectacle was as other fires – terrible, threateneing, a blaze showing fitfully through the windows and walls that later gave way, and over all a giant smuge of smoke that could be seen in the far sections of the city. But with the growing cold and the increased bitterness of the wind the ice came. It incrusted the building, it covered with a silvery film all the buldings around about, and the firemen themselves looked like fantastic figures from some fairy spectacle of the Far North.
With the coming of nightfall, the ice that had accumulated layer upon layer upon the sidewalk, rose into a mound of several feet.
Ice Shuts Out the Flames
By noon, the flames within the Equitable Building were invisible from the streets. One simply saw from Broadway a structure that had turned into a gleaming white. The noon sunlight, striking down thorugh the open space of Trinity Church yard, made it radiant. The pillars were enlarged and ghost-like like giant icicles, and around the Broadway entrance, the encrusted white was so thick that all the tracery and decorative carving was obliterated. There stood out with a new distinctiveness, however, the letters which proclaimed that within was the home of “The Equitable Life Assurance Society.” Something of the same covering was bestowed by the showering spray upon the buildings all about on Broadway, Pine, Cedar and Nassau streets, so that by noon-time, every horizontal line and every arch that beautifies the front elevation of the Fourth National was outlined in a frosted coating and the dome of the Clearing House was a gleaming mound. When the smoke cleared away and the steam and spray would shift, the scene suggested the spangled white of the Christmas cards.
But this same hand of Winter that cast a spell of beauty over the disaster made the whole section a fearful place for those whose business took them there yesterday, and a more than fearful place for the fire fighteres. These men had to be literally thawed out from time to time, when they would be so sheathed in ice that for all their dogged bravery to go on was not humanly possible.
At 9 o’clock Fire Chief Kenlon, who worked like a Trojan at this--his first great fire--was actually weighted down with icicles. They had formed on his eyebrows and hung from his mustache like dumbbells. From his shoulders and arms the men on the lines had to chop away the coat of ice. He looked like a man from another world. It was so with all the firemen whose work took them into the zone of the shifting spray, and it was soon found necessary to open relief stations in the entrances to the various office buildings which faced the building that was in flames. Here police and men detailed from the Fire Department bent over the half frozen men, pressing their stiff gloves onto the radiators, cutting, scraping, and chopping the ice from their helmets and hair and shoulders, and here and there furnishing them with the hot coffee for the glow to send them back to the hose and the wreck of the Equitable.
Scenes at the Fire
It was the coffee man who was treasured and hailed as the most welcome visitant of those hard hours. With his constantly refilled can – the milkman’s variety – he darted here and there, looming up now and then out of the smoke and mist, darting under the streams of the hose and coming unexpectedly from behind the ice mound that was once a useful piece of fire apparatus. Not only he, but volunteers, did this Good Samaritan work. More than one woman, heavily wrapped in furs, drove to the edge of the danger zone, showed to the police lines credentials in the form of coffee cans and boxes of sandwiches, and, armed with these, made their way to some corner whence the provisions might be dispensed.
One young woman, who declined to give her name, but who the small boy acting as her lieutenant called Miss Ducey, arrived early and stayed until dark, her stock of coffee and sandwiches contantly replenished. She took up her stand in the vestibule of the United States Realty Building, and there dealt out the warm drink to the frozen firemen who were led up to her by the policeman guarding the entrance. One of the Equitable’s officers took note of the work, wished he should share in it, and put $20 in her hand, a bill that soon added to the stores.
There were many such instances of help volunteered. One man saw a priest hurrying by with a coffee cup abrim in either hand.
“Are you selling those?” he asked.
“Of course not,” was the wondering rejoinder, and for answer, so the story runs, the man thrust two yellow bills at him and asked that he might thus help him to keep it up.
One of the girls who was dispensing refreshments in this fashion saw the figure of a big man, wrapped in a big coat that glistened with its covering of ice. He looked as though he had seen hard service in the fire, and she touched him on the arm.
"Have a sandwich, Chief?" she proffered.
"I am not a Chief," he answered, gently shaking his head; "I'm only a priest, and I – I do not think that I care to eat."
He had indeed seen hard service. The man was Father McGean.
Everything in Ice’s Grip
But it was not only the people that were hampered in their work by the ice that formed all about. It formed as well on the many pieces of fire apparatus, and several trucks, so placed as to catch the wind-driven streams where the hose was playing, were gradually rendered quite useless. Here and there stood trucks, so swathed in ice that it was hard to believe they had ever moved or would every move again. The ice that gripped and held one hose wagon on Broadway was, more than two feet thick in some places, and with the coming of darkness people within the building could hear the firemen outside chopping away and casting great chunks down on to the street.
The water tower that was reared on Nassau Street between Pine and Cedar was soon a stationary thing, its every cog and wheel lost from sight in the ice coating and embedded in a fast thickening foundation of ice. It was part of the street itself, it seemed, and the street itself was ice. The part of the street immediately in front of the destroyed buiding on Broadway all ice, so that the end of the asphalt and the beginning of the sidewalk was indistinguishable.
Not only the firemen themselves but the policemen who formed the fire lines but passers by were caught and coated with ice before they could get beyond reach of the spray that the wind kept ever whirling through the air. A messenger boy darted out of the doors of the Fourth National at noon and made his way north. To run that block was to make one’s way through an all-cloudy mist that shut out of sight of the buildings all around and made the street a ghostly place with long lines of shrouded hose to trip and stumble over. A block away, with the air clearer, the messenger boy stopped and found that ice had formed over his eyebrows and that his face and clothing were drenched. It was the experience of everyone, and silk hats fared no better than the messenger boy’s cap.
About 5 o’clock in the afternoon a sinister red gleam appeared on the very edge of Broadway, in the ground floor of the building. It showed with fitfully shifting brilliance behind a grating of iron bars all of them white. The firemen watched this fascinated, but to attack it was needless. It was the blazing of record books, papers, and accounts of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, stored there in vast quantities, out of reach, and threatening nothing else. Until late last night this was still a red glare matched by another that showed in the darkness from one of the highest remaining parts of the ruined structure.
How the Police Helped
A block beyond the burning square on all four sides was the line drawn by the police lines, maintained all day. This cordon was put into effect by Inspector Daly, Cahalane, and McClusky, who had in charge. 250 officers and patrolmen.
Pg. 3
They went over at the sound of the third alarm. Forty detectives were sent to the fire and to the surrounding district of disturbance to prevent sneak thievery. Last night Commissioner Waldo assigned 80 patrolmen in uniform and another forty detectives to keep the night watch. With the coming of 7 o’clock this morning the Traffic Squad will take charge of the vicinity. It is promised from Headquarters that every effort will be made to permit the usual business and street traffic to be resumed in the financial district.
Yesterday both were paralyzed. The police lines were tightly drawn, so that those who would pass had to show a police card or some excellent reason. Impatient silk-hatted folk were held back with eager newsboys, and one policeman was peculiarly obdurate to one woman spectator who held her lorgnettes poised to catch what glimpse she could from beyond the fire lines.
The traffic was badly prostrated. The surface line on Broadway was obviously and completely thrown out of business, but the fire unexpectedly halted even the subway trains for as much as half an hour in the morning. That was when it was feared that the sidewalk would cave in.
As for the trolley lines from the Battery to City Hall Park, there was no sign of life on them after daybreak, and the first interruption caused by the arrival of the fire fighters. Then, as the ice settled in a heavy coating over Broadway, it was plain that the few cars stranded further downtown were there for some time to come. Unless there was a marked change in temperature, there will have to be some hard chopping done to clear the tracks for use within the next few days. Yesterday all cars halted at Murray Street, the South Ferry ones switching there to the uptown tracks.
Great Throng of Onlookers
Despite the holdup in the Subway and absolute collapse of the trolleys, crowds poured into the stricken section all day long. Few stayed, for the police were not cordial, and only the most curious and hardy could withstand the cold and the wind and the wet for more than just long enough to take a glimpse. The arrival of the army of clerks at 9 blackened all the side streets with a pressing crowd, and throughout the day a glance at the windows of all surrounding skyscrapers suggested that within many an office business slackened yesterday. Yet in many institutions the work went relentlessly on, and the doorkeeper at the Fourth National Bank was surprised when he was asked if any clerks had been eye-witnesses of the fire. “They had to open the mail and get ready the exchanges,” he said in the voice of one who knows that banks wait for no fire.
As he spoke the bank was filled with the placid hum of routine business, yet the windows looked upon a ruined building, and Nassau Street in front was all but impassable, fire badge or no fire badge. It was that way all through the section yesterday, tremendous effort of rescue and alleviation going on amid scenes of destruction the while that ordinary business, hampered and blocked here and there, went on its unemotional, unpreoccupied way.
Kenlon Proud of His Men
Late in the afternoon Chief Kenlon came into the Trinity building and began to break the ice that formed a covering an inch thick on his big white helmet.
"It has been a great battle," he said. "It was made all the harder because of narrow streets, weather that approached the zero kind, and the fact that it was in an old building. The work of the men was superb and they never showed better than they did in keeping this fire in the building in which it started. I cannot say too much in praise of them, and I would be a strange man if I was not proud of them. As for poor Walsh he was a brave and able fireman, and now that it seems certain that he is lost I can only say that great as is my feeling of sorrow over his death, it must be a source of comfort to all who knew and loved him that he died like he did, in the heroic discharge of his duty."
At that hour the roof of the Equitable building was still on fire, and Chief Kenlon said that it would be several hours before a search could be started for the bodies of Walsh and others supposed to be in the ruins. And that night, working under the glare of search lights, the firemen of four hook and ladder companies began the search for the bodies. The ice which had formed in some places over a foot thick greatly hampered the firemen. It is uncertain in which of the ruins the body of the dead battalion chief is.
So high is the pile of destruction the building that the firemen who were making the search said last night that it would probably be some time today before they find Walsh's body.
Chief Kenlon, who was called to Brooklyn by two four-alarm fires last night, was back at the Equitable Building by 9 o'clock and after looking over the situation ordered the Trinity Building, 115 Broadway, which had been closed for the night, opened. He then sent a number of firemen in the building and ordered streams thrown from the roof of that building into the ruins of the Equitable Building.
Charles E. Knobluch, R. Lansburg, R. H. Mainzer, and H. H. Hallgarten of the Stock Exchange firm of Hallgarten & Co., 5 New Street, gave an order last night that food and hot coffee be served to the firemen and police at their expense.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Dun & Bradstreet World Trade Center Business Listing
Dun & Bradstreet published a "World Trade Center Business Listing," current "As of 9/11/01," which carries this heading:
The original source for the document was a PDF posted at the Let's Roll Forum:
[PDF]World Trade Center Business Listing- www.dnb.com- Dec 3File Format:PDF/Adobe Acrobat -Quick View
World Trade Center Business Listing. As of 9/11/01.D&BD-U-N-S Number. Business Name. 787890029. 3 S USA, INC. 825502904. 32 GROUP COMPANY. 083739263...
letsrollforums.com/phpwebsite/files/documents/WTC.OccupancyList.pdf
The cached, "Quick View" link is still working.
See related blogs:
79 Firms Said To Be Operating in the North Tower of the World Trade Center Were Unknown to Dun & Bradstreet
and
33 Firms Said To Be Operating in the South Tower of the World Trade Center Were Unknown to Dun & Bradstreet
The following is a list of those businesses that, according to Dun & Bradstreet's records, operated from an address at the World Trade Center. This information is representative of information in D&B's database as of September 11, 2001 and may be updated as additional facts become known. Please Note: In some instances there will be multiple records with the same name or a similar name. This may result from the existence of multiple business operations or divisions/affiliates within the World Trade Center. D&B requests that any reprinting, reproduction or redistribution of this information include the following notation: Source: Dun & Bradstreet - www.dnb.com
The original source for the document was a PDF posted at the Let's Roll Forum:
[PDF]World Trade Center Business Listing- www.dnb.com- Dec 3File Format:PDF/Adobe Acrobat -Quick View
World Trade Center Business Listing. As of 9/11/01.D&BD-U-N-S Number. Business Name. 787890029. 3 S USA, INC. 825502904. 32 GROUP COMPANY. 083739263...
letsrollforums.com/phpwebsite/files/documents/WTC.OccupancyList.pdf
The cached, "Quick View" link is still working.
See related blogs:
79 Firms Said To Be Operating in the North Tower of the World Trade Center Were Unknown to Dun & Bradstreet
and
33 Firms Said To Be Operating in the South Tower of the World Trade Center Were Unknown to Dun & Bradstreet
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)