Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 70, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1898 — FOOD FOR FLAMES. [ARTICLE]

FOOD FOR FLAMES.

Fire Sweeps Away Fifty Buildings at llulutli, Mlnn.-Tivu Thousand Homeless People. , Duluth, Minn., May 9.—Fifty frame buildings on Minnesota Point, just above the ship canal, were burned Sunduy afternoon. There was a lazy puff of smoke, u buret of flame and then a long row of ramshackle buildings sprang into a blaze. An hour later 2,000 people were homeless. The fire todk 12 frame store buildings fronting on Lower Lake avenue, just below the “Under-the-hi 11” district nnd swept from there back to the lake shore. The district was populated by the poorest people in the city. Many of the upper parts of the two and three-story store buildings were occupied as tenements. They were inhabited as closety as the people could cluster and back of the line of buildings fronting on the street were shacks huddled all too close for health and safely. There are no particularly large individual losses. The total is thought to be over SIOO,OOO. Among the sufferers were 50 families o* Jews, members of a colony, who were at a mass-meeting praying for the success of the American army in the wur with Spain. There were many narrow escapes from death, but it is believed '.hat everybody was rescued.