People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1895 — FIRE LOSS OF $300,000. [ARTICLE]

FIRE LOSS OF $300,000.

BIG CONFLAGRATION AT PORTSMOUTH. VA. Freight and Warehouse Destroyed — Hard Work Keeps the Flames from Spreading —One Life Lost —Insurance Thought to Be Ample. Norfolk, Va., Oct. 10. —A fire, caused by a broken electric wire, started in warehouse D, of the Seaboard Air Line, In Portsmouth, at 7:20 o’clock yesterday, which destroyed that structure, together with thousands of dollars’ worth of freight, including 700 bales of cotton, nine loaded freight cars, and the warehouse and stave yard of Reed. Bros. & Co..adjoining. Two men werecut off from escape, and jumped overboard, one of them, W. H. Hall, white, being drowned. The ferry wharf and a lumber yard intervening repeatedly took fire, but the flames were promptly extinguished by the ferry boats. Aid was sent by the Norfolk and Berkley fire departments, and from the United States navy yard. A barrel of nitrate of soda, the property of W. R. Grace, of New York, stored in the Reed warehouse, exploded with a deafening report. The concussion shook the roofs in that vicinity. The loss is estimated at $300,000, on which there is about $75,000 insurance on the Seaboard Air Line’s warehouse. There is insurance on all the property burned, but the amount cannot be ascertained.