Arizona Silver Belt/1896/A Hot Fire

A Hot Fire.

A few minutes before 7 o'clock last Monday evening fire was discovered by some children in the small frame house in the southwestern corner of the O. K. corral. A general alarm was sounded and in a very few minutes a hundred men were at the scene and began vigorously to fight the flames, which had gained considerable headway.
The house was a low frame structure of five rooms built against the adobe wall inclosing the corral, and was joined on the north by the corral shed. It required quick work and good judgment to stop the progress of the flames, which for a few minutes threatened to communicate to the large adobe building adjoining on the east. Men with axes cut down the shed north of the fire and stopped its progress in that direction, and the eastern end of the burning house was also partially torn down. The bucket brigade did good work, and wet blankets suspended from the roof of the adobe building protected the exposed frame work.
Within fifteen minutes after the first alarm, the fire was under control. About sixty feet of the corral shed was destroyed, and the total loss of the owner of the property, W. H. Duryea, is estimated at $600.
The fire started in the room occupied by Mr. Campbell, a miner, at the corner of the corral, but how it originated is not definitely known. He lost everything he had in the room, as did. Mr. McKenzie, the adjoining roomer. The clothing of John Branaman and G. O. Scott, the stage man, were saved from the devouring flames. Mr. Howatt, proprietor of the corral, lost little except three sacks of barley, which were stolen. Some pilfering is reported.
Frank Johnson, one of the hardest workers at the fire, narrowly escaped serious injury. He slipped from the roof of the high adobe building, but in the descent succeeded in grasping a rung of a ladder leaning against the wall, thus saving himself from a hard fall.
Mr. Duryea requests us to convey his grateful thanks to all who so willingly and successfully worked to stay the progress of the fire.