Fire

Occasionally, it is good to remember that we live in a part of the state known for fires.  They are not as common as they once where, still for all the trappings of suburbia this is fire country.   Fires were more common back in 1910's and 1920's, there were just more people tromping around the woods in those days and because of the use of steam to power donkeys and locomotives.  Kind of like having an open fire in your wooden building, its real easy for something bad to happen.  Something bad did happen back on this date in 1922.  A spark from a steam donkey started a fast moving blaze that burned half the town of Cedar Falls and knocked out power to Seattle for a time.

The fire moved quickly consuming all in it's path, the Milwaukee Road's Cedar Falls rail yard was hit, and once the power lines were knocked out, the rolling stock was destroyed, you see the Milwaukee Road was electrified though Cedar Falls.  Most the homes of the railroad men were also destroyed.  The towns folk took refuge in the railroad's power house and in the Masonry Dam on the Cedar River.  The city of Seattle, was faced with two big problems, first the town was theirs and second the water for the city came from the Cedar River at Cedar Falls.   This was a big problem because the pipeline that took the water to the city 30 miles away, was made of wood.  To save the pipeline and to slow the fire the city bore holes in the pipes every couple feet, to create a sprinkler effect.  It worked half the town was saved and the pipeline spared and within a couple days the fire had been controlled.  This was one of the worst fires in the first 40 years of statehood.  

Living not four miles from where this all took place, it is amazing, first because it is so rural and isolated at the time and second the threat is still very real, not this rainy spring, but some dry summer maybe.

Pictures of Cedar Falls and the Masonry Dam.

Dan