People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1894 — PORTLAND’S BIG LOSS. [ARTICLE]

PORTLAND’S BIG LOSS.

Property Estimated at @765,000 Destroyed in the Oregon City. Portland, Ore., Sept. 25. —The most disastrous fire in the history of this city broke out at 4:30 o’clock Sunday afternoon in the dock of the Pacifie Coast Elevator company and raged for three hours, destroying property valued at nearly 8765,000. The scene of the fire is across the river from the main part of the city and it was at least fifteen minutes before more than one engine could respond to the general alarm. The elevator contained nearly half a million busheis of wheat. The new plant of the Portland General Electric company, which had just arrived from Lynn, Mass, was standing in the yards of the terminal company on the ears, not having been unloaded. The plant occupied an entire train, and the machinery was of the most expensive kind, the most of which was destroyed and the remainder badly damaged. Two hundred freight ears, eighty of which were loaded, were destroyed, The Oregon Railway & Navigation dock held 1,500 tons of freight, consisting of wool, salmon, general merchandise and cement, all of which was destroyed with the dock. There were stored on the dock about 12,000 eases of salmon from the lower Columbia river and Puget sound awaiting shipment for the east. It was valued at about 840,000 and was partly insured. Three men are supposed to have perished in the elevator. Charles Anderson, a man named Brown and one named Murray were seen at an upperstory window of the elevator and it is thought they were all burned.