The Seattle Star Newspaper, October 29, 1915, Page 1

& * a ui i= ba © Wanted after the fire because of an OHN FREDERICK ‘ | BROWN of Boston iG T tells a United Press EDITION man in Paris how a “Jack Johnson” shell put r . : WeatH@r Forecast—Unsettied hi mout of business Champagne. Page in the 4 VOLUME 18 SEATTLE, WASH.,, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1915. ONE CENT Shwa tx SEE GERMAN PLOT IN $1,000,000 FIRE HERE COTTON FOR ALLIES STORED IN BURNED PIER | POLICE LD After careful check of the damage fire, which practically destroy ed Pier 14, Thursday night, | and ruined the greater port yne by an incendiary of valuable merchandise stored | inside, ’ I es, local manager fc dy Co.,| Mwho operate the pier, Friday} stimated the | at well over | 1,000,000. The Star was told Friday in re Mable water front sources that 6,000 bales of cotton, valued at! & about $300,000, destined for Russia » Were burned when Pier No. 14 was} destroyed Cotton is essential in the manu facture of explosives. Says Only 500 Bales Dodwell & Co, Limited, a great! English shipping firm with branches !n all parts of the world, h operated the dock, denied mrt its local manager that any @uch amount of cotton was on the| | | | He Placed the amount at “about | 100 bales” E. Wiimann, longshoreman, ar- | RTY OF GIANTS night described it as a gi- antic pot of te boil. He nd water had caused | 30,000 cases of tea to burst. The | tea stood in sodden mountai | over the warehouse floor. To of water were played upon the mountains of tea. from land and from the fire tugs to | the slips. | The heat was intense. The ) water, when it hit the roaring | flames, steamed and hissed and boiled. A strong, pungent, appetizing aroma of tea filled the air. Mixed with it sensi. tive nostrils could detect faint er smelis as of spices of the Orient. it might have been a tea —-ty of giants, except that the ich of $200,000 worth of rub. | ber burning rather spoiled the | tea party effect. a alleged conversation wit longshoreman in a wat loon, in which he is said predicted the fire, was examined behind closed doors Frida Chief of Police «, ¢ in § Stew | art, and Fire Marshal Harry W Bringhurst Bringhurst says he ts convince the fire was of incendiary ortg fire tw ner not Held Captain Stewart sa after examination of W hat t Jongshoreman te lear erreien: te forward story up he point 5 | \ ’ where he had the a ed mt k with the other longshoreman, R. B. Brad-| aw. He remembered being in the sa Joon, he sald, but he co member if he met Hradeh he could not recall what he ta bout in the saloor iImann’s stor not satist the. police and t nd she Is held « couver, B fore coming Will be looked into Dodwell & Cec Bine Funnel | the port com use, hereaft Mock nt Smith The total p stored in the fer, accord Manager Haines, was $2,900,000 Damage to the matter, cor at about $ by insurance Ainsworth & Dodwell & Co. “We t galmon Haines, 26,000 « Pice, $200 tons of new other miscell Have Other Theories How much of the freight covered t not be estim to fed it ment @ theory Is tha . . > Tal pga | THE RAINIER SCHOOL, one of the 39 frame school buildings in Seattle without fire + escapes. It occupies the block between King and Weller sts. and 23d and 24th aves, S. Below is a picture of one of the two winding wooden stairways leading from the second to the first floor in the new Washington school. These wooden stairways, called “interior fire escapes” by the school board, are depended upon to safeguard lives of pupils in local schools, The school which burned at Peabody, Mass. had | : them, too. | — a i By Fred L. Boalt WENTY-ONE children, ranging in age from 8 to 14, lost their lives in a school fire at Pea body, Mass., yesterday. The newspaper accounts of the disaster do not make pleasant reading. There were wh fire-escapes on the building, and the doors swung in! Some of the rr children were suffocated to death. Some were trampled to death. Some jumped from windows and were dashed to death. And some were burned to death. It is possible that you read the accounts with composure. It may be that you felt sorry, in a detached, impersonal sort of way, for those children who were suffocated, trampled, dashed and burned to death, and for their fathers and mothers. ? Peabody, Mass., is a long way from Seattle, Wash., and such a tragedy could not happen to your children. Your children are alive, | thank God! It could! It could happen to your children. We have in this state, it is true, a law requiring that school doors swing out, not in. But there are in Seattle 39 frame school buildings which have no fire-escapes. ‘Stull others ran to the windows. Bewildered, they jumped.” I am quoting excerpts from the news dispatches. “Many were injured in le aping. They did not stop to see where | rescuing hands were outstretched.” “There were no fire-escapes. The children were trapped.” on “With cries on their lips and arms extended to parents, they literal- ly roasted to death.” = 1 MAY ‘ + oe 8 * & ie WONDER what the fathers and mothers of those dead children in Peabody, Mass., thought and said when ~ they read, several years ago, the newspaper accounts of the terrible Collinwood, Bi school fire. Did they comfort themselves, as we here are no doubt comforting ourselves, with the thought that the children who died were no kin of theirs and that such a thing couldn't happen in Peabody? a | saw that fire in Collinwood. That is, | reached that suburb of Cleveland an hour after the alarm, Fe salah haere Maes he { and I saw the school building as a roaring, white-hot furnace. The brick walls still stood, but that was all. Twenty-eighth Infantry, which . | | I saw row on row of blankets on a warehouse floor nearby. Under each blanket were burned flesh and arrived last week, was twice at : charred bones. tacked between midnight and : a: An hour before they had been healthy, happy little ones. daylight today | ! 4 alin tine. Sete, Sia ae tah a tieonm scldtor wee { noe FRIEND of mine, a newspaper man, had two bonny children. That morning their mother packed fire, but the ‘ eos them off to school. I went with the father of those children to the warehouse, and together we peered caught between : , at the grisly things beneath the blankets that had been boys and girls. their second attack, suffered I do not know quite why he wanted to find his children. What difference did it make? They were a Aieavlake wad wonnted’ Gale! gr By i : dead. He said he would recognize the buttons on their clothes. He didn’t find his children. ‘ ling the fitet. attack at the Capote bles I'll never forget his haggard, chalk-white face. He dared not go home and tell his wife he could not ch, north of Hidalgo. ths | find their dead. Shea little while before had stood, with other agonized mothers, just outside those doors, 1 } i : which blunderers had built to swing in, and she had caught glimpses of her children’s faces in that hellish hai ii press of trapped children, and she had seen her children die. oe: ees ae) eh root Elidsign, (The: Mexioasic| | Ih) wih ny ai HERE is not any GREAT danger a recurrence of the Peabody disaster in Seattle, but there is SOME two hours cam bet ete a, danger. Our schools are not fire traps, not even the frame buildings, but they DO lack fire escapes. A ar . ; . | fire such as occurred in Peabody, shutting off the use ot stairways, WOULDN'T occur in Seattle once in a ¥ valry, however, drove «MAY ASK SPAIN 1 TINY BODIES lifetime—perhaps NEVER. But remember, it didn’t happen often in Peabody, either. ind their flank and attacked * the r, * while * 2 more rei ridge the aay Hie foryp bee ai T0 SETTLE WAR LIE IN MORGUE, CHE Seattle school board takes a complacent w of fire-danger to the schools. : The board points out that th are “interior fire-escapes.” And so there are. And an “interior fire- | escape” is nothing but an ordinary wooden stairway which would burn like tinder. HEAR CARRANZA pahinbeh ue ’ ment in Pes oe pian The board points out that there are frequent fire drills in the schools. And so there are. An excellent : oF 2g a Brkt hace Perea oF pit | Practice. But a fire drill in a building which isn’t afire is quite different from a fire drill in a building filled HAS BEEN SLAIN ediat 1 ¥ was) sight—the half burned, twisted} With flame and blinding smoke. he abso F ¥ nong of-|corp#es of 19 children, victims of The board points out that the law does not compel it to put fire-escapes on school buildings less than c a result of renewed|the holocaust in St. John’s paro-) three stories high. And that is true. The board is quite within the law. a4 c nte t4 peace. chial se y da. 7 * * ; SAN ANTONIO, Tex. Oct ) ; ripen Ta sai tat But I, who have a boy of 7, who attends a big wooden school with no escapes. y “interior 28—Loeal telephone companies | | mS hospital morgue e-| escapes” are not enough. Fire drills are not enough. We do not want to economize at the risk of 7 bs * : s 0 na and shock | the * , . s blis’ cind-flagwt foi, eatkisy. children’s lives. j : ‘ ( Gen. Carranza had been as oon § 0 the 1 mt o The of rat ae yi If, after fire-escapes, there is any other device which might still further insure, in any degree, the lar thoritte that mingled with the de 4 Haddad! ihe ay : S ’ sasainated, The story wae un 1, rather t » nite side the fire-awept hails of} Safety Of our children, why, we want that, too, confirmed. 4 : he schoo ; a The board says it has taken every reasonable precaution. IT HAS NOT. A fire-escape is a reasonable r surope read o de n 10 firemen eater reported | : F: . Nd ee nae ite nd been recovered, precaution. And in a matter of such moment to me as the life or death of my boy, the law and economy - JOHN W. CONSIDINE TELLS | [=| meets sy, wenn go Parise nian ne Law ~ COURT HE IS FLAT BROKE = “525 BOARD ‘SAYS FIRE ESCAPES AREN'T NEEDED In Russia there are enough peo-| While tle has some of the)They are fine, wide stairs, and four;Fire Marshal Bringhurst point « building can be ¢ to populate Great Hritain, Ger-}most up » fireproof school o d walk down howe { ' Seattle, ber consid: | buildings, er if they werm not pan ing ou stead of have fire- our today received a report that made, In a num f them the halls and stairways oofed, so that the iren is much less In Peabody, the children jammed than one would believe exists by a Members of the school board say; Nathan Eckstein, a member of against the main door and it ex castial exanithation schoolhouses, and 39 of , ‘ y the smoke and iny danger there is yo nee G , s ithe school board ve in th not be opened In Sea . For the St three years, no in because @ll thé schools are! nection In 1 he S pressure wOuld open the doors surance has » carried with pri With pl&nty of “intertor|the children in se fire drills) tn the new buildings the heating| Yate © son school build f 1 re » street in about a minute. pants are located in separate ae io ings, the s¢ | board figuring that Je aga oe " There ia never any running or ex-)) 20'%! Ried In separate build: the school district carry its fire esteapes” are] hd and not ‘in the basements of nothing. mores or less,|¢itement, and the drills are carried It own insurance che: old buildings The frame — choo aia: GES ger pee abs a ool buildings yught to be provided with ontside fire @capes to carry out every pre- Sreraith: ba: teagh ate Aad gl a Pana al eR lg Raa be burning og| caution,” was the statement made took the you ha 80 parted with th Z Pas , ire exeay wre wooden | minut Vhen i be BP pe new buildings,” says | Friday at the offices of John Davis m “tg eh opie stairways, In some of the brick]red, the diills failed, The childrer ¢ r ould ent ¢ A almost Invatlably at ‘ re ind still the classes | & Co., one of the largest fire insur and almost invariably ata mon-|/jutidings, the stairways are also|could not be olled. They rush the buildine ! ae dubing: DYinE Thala! we , could go 0 he building with: ance firms in the city ing f wooden ed to the windows. And there were| © . Pay ahh aeretl n ange enh ae A nol on he lage ad In some schools there are many!No outside fire escape tireproe ment The streets and sewers commit. ittle dvit whe Have you any in hock?" asked | ing and livest. business institu. ||stairways, In others t are not| There is no claim made that the In the older buildings, which tee Thursday afternoon ordered the etween $10 and $ ta time he examiner mid’ Aleka Wo your Matheday 1100 1 “interlor fire escapes” in Seattle are not fireproof,” says Eckstein, planking of Rainier ave, between Considine wa examined as No,” retorted Considine. “I sold|| shopping lst from the ad® and Int ashington school, for in-|differ from the “interfor fire es-,"improvements have been made|Kenny and Thistle and between to his i to satisfy a $2,500|them outright. 1 never hocked any fava 4 at sum of money re, only two stairways|capes” the Peabody school had during the past few years to make/Hanford and Edmunds sts, at a E ght. ked 4 ave a ne n of mone Reh ts y dwelling house in Seattle has Out in perfect order the heating Slants atin , some of these “Interior fire es-| The drills at Peabody, Mass inquired ey Geo 1 wane Ue me sign almins, eeaminiis In frame schoolhouses, the/used to clear the » in two and | judgment “ alned on ao overdue thing,” Hi |from the ynd floor to the first Members of the schgol board apd them as safe trom fire as a frame total of $31,000