Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1895 — FIRE IN MILWAUKEE. [ARTICLE]

FIRE IN MILWAUKEE.

Valuable Railroad aid Steamboat Property Swept Away. Fire burned over a dozen blocks m Milwaukee Thursday and destroyed property worth S3B2,(XX). It started on the river front at the Water street bridge and before it was stopped it had burned a swath from one to three blocks wide to Sixth street. A stiff breeze served to fan the flames and sent them traveling west over the yards of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad Company with startling rapidity, destroying in their path the freight warehouses of railroad and steamship companies, valuable freight in storage and railway ears. For four hours n>l the fire apparatus, firemen and employes of the railroad company in the city fought the progress of the flames before they were under control. When the fighters finished work two companies of firemen were left to guard half

a square mile of glowing embers. During the exciting scenes incident* to fire-fight-ing a boy was run over by a fire engine and killed. The losses are divided as follows: Buildings in the freight yard, all owned by the C., M. & St. P. R. R. Co SIOO,OOO Union Steamboat Company..... 40,000 Anchor line (Pennsylvania C 0.).. 40,000 Sixty freight cars (C., M. & St. P: • i £Co.) ........ ....... 50,000 Wisconsin Central, freight..... 30,000 (J., M. & St. P, Co. freight 70,000 Franklin refiners of Philadelphia. 37,000 Delaney warehouse, damaged... 5,000 Pritzlaff warehouse, damaged ~ , 2,000 P. F. Doyne’s factory. 2,000 Twelve frame houses, damaged.. 6,000 T0ta1.... .. . ; ~.. .$382,000 insurance companies, however, will stand the greater portion of the loss. The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Company, by far the heaviest loser, is fully' protected by insurance, as are the steamship and manufacturing concerns. The dozen frame cottages that stand on the north edge of the burned district, and were all more or less damaged by the blaze, are owned by workingmen, who must stand their own losses. They suffered not only by damage done to their homes by the fire, but iu the excitement the house furnishings were thrown into the street and nearly destroyed. Ashes from the pipe of a careless longshoreman at Work on the docks of the Union Steamboat Company are believed to have caused the expensive blaze. No one knows just how it started. When first seen it was burning on'the planking of the dock close to the south end of the building at a point where there is a bend

in the river, several hundred feet west of the West Water street bridge. A southwest gale blowing over the city at a thirty-mile-fln-hour gait fanned it, and in less time than it takes to tell the story the flames were licking up 1,500 feet of valuable river front property.