Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1895 — FIRE KILLS SIX MEN. [ARTICLE]

FIRE KILLS SIX MEN.

WALL COLLAPSES IN A MINNEAPOLIS BLAZE. Worst la Many Ycara-Fonr Blocks In 'Frisco Destroyed Valued at $2,000,000 —Flames Rage for Four Hours, Fanned by a High Wind. Loss Placed at $260,000. Six men were killed and ten hurt Thursday night in the most disastrous fire which has visited Minneapolis since the old Tribune building conflagration, when the five-story brick building at 240 and 242 First avenue south, in which was the MacDonald crockery store, was destroyed. The fire broke out at 11 o’clock and burst forth with a sudden violence which defied restraint. The building was full of straw used in packing the china and the flames fed upon this and swelled to gigantic proportions. They leaped above the walls and rolled in waves of fire over the roof. The entire fire department of the city was called out and heroic measures were used by the firemen to stay the terrible tide. First avenue and Third street were filled with spectators, who watched the awful sight. Suddenly while they looked the south wall tottered out and fell with a sudden crash. A murmur of agony went up from the throng who had but a moment before seen a squad of firemen run into the alley with a quantity <sf hose and turn six streams of water on the walls and into the windows. Sixteen men were under that wall. When they were dragged out six were dead and others seriously injured.

The property loss consisted of the entire demolition of the building occupied by McDonald Brothers, dealers in crockery, chinaware, glassware, silverware and gas fixtures. The building was of five stories, brick walls and wooden interior framework, and was well stocked. The fire originated in the boxes and packing stored in the rear of the building and was beyond the power of the fire department to control. At a few minutes before midnight the walls fell, one side wall falling in and the other falling out into the alley, where the firemen were at work. The loss will aggregate over $260,000; insurance unknown. The first evidence of the coming disaster was the discovery of smoke from the rear portion of the building at 10:40 o’clock. Several alarms were turned in, the engine house only a few hundred feet from the fire. For nearly half an hour fire burned within the walls and roof of the building. It broke out first on the alley nearest Third street, at the door near the rear. The firemen could clearly see that the flames were under full headway in the back part of the building, near the elevator. All this while the front was still dark, only a slight escape of smoke from the doors and windows betraying the fierce conflict of the elements within. So the great store stood for fully twenty minutes, a vortex of flame within and a cold nnd dark exterior. The firemen themselves in their efforts to get their streams to play upon the flames' opened the building to currents of air that changed the suppressed fierceness and sent its tongues through the roof and the windows, casting a lurid light on the surrounding scene.