Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1899 — We Had A Fire. [ARTICLE]

We Had A Fire.

And It Might Hare Been A Very Bad One. There was “a hot time in the ol'jd town - ’ last night, and it might eerily have been a great deal hotter. The hotness we did have resulted from the weather. The hotness that we missed was a fire which amounted to comparatively little, but it might easily had it not been discovered in time, have been the worst in the history of the town. The fire was in Laßue Bros’, big department store. Some person discovered smoke in the stores and telephoned the alarm to the water station, and just as the fire whistle began to sound, A. R. Hopkins and Earl Housman saw the smoke in the store, and broke in the doors. No fire was visible but the whole store was filled with dense smoke. The two young men searched about a little and found that two big piles of calicoes were on fire, on a counter in the back part of the drygoods department. They seized on the bales of burning goods and carried them out in the street, and that was the end of the fire. The Laßue’s estimate that there were 1,000 yards in the pile, and it is all ruined. It is also probable that many other goods in the store are more or less damaged by the smoke. How the fire started or how long it bad been smouldering in the closely packed bales of calico, no one knows, but parties living upstairs in the building reported having smelled smoke for a long time. Possibly a bit of fire was dropped from a cigar in the goods, early in the evening. There was no light burning in that of the store. It was just about 11 o’clock when the alarm was given. Had the flames caught the numerous lace curtains and other very inflammable articles hanging near, they must, in a very short time, have extended all over the store, including the great quantities of furniture in the west room. In that case, it is very doubtful if any exertions upon the part of our firemen could have saved the building or the Bedford or Starr buildings on the east. There was abundant scope, right there, for far the most disastrous fire in the history of the town, and the escape from .it was certainly pretty narrow. This was the first time the new fire whistle has ever sounded for a real fire, {and it certainly demonstrated its efficiency, for the purpose. The fire company was promptly on hand, and a large crowd of people, but there was nothing for them to do, as the throwing out of the burning goods, by Hopkins and Housman, fully disposed of the fire.