The North Coast times-eagle., December 01, 1997, Page 14, Image 14

PAGE 14
NORTH COAST TIMES EAGLE, DECEMBER 1997
THE GREAT ASTORIA FIRE
"With the heart of its business district wiped out
by fire and with part of the lower residence district in
ashes, one of its leading citizens dead and many more
or less seriously injured, Astoria, the oldest town in the
state of Oregon, at 11 o'clock today, was only a bleak
scar on the banks of the wide reaches of the Columbia."
-THE PORTLAND TELEGRAM, 12/8/22
One spring morning I wake up to shouts that my house
was on fire. Skeptical, I dressed and stepped outside into pre­
dawn darkness flared by a crown of flames above my head. I
looked up and saw the end of a part of my life, unaware at first
that the life of a man whose cigarette set him and the house
afire had simply ended.
Hours later, after the charred corpse was hauled away
for a second cremation, wires and pipes unplugged from the
burnt house in the manner life-support is removed from the
dead, I stared at the smoking ruin, a house built in the first year
of the current century, a survivor of the great fire that destroyed
Astoria's heart just before Christmas 1922.
I am not sure how far I can expand the burning of a
single apartment house with the holocaust of a city center —
that would be like comparing the loss of a soldier with the
massacre of an army. Yet the year my house burned was the
same a pyromaniac attempted to incinerate the city a third time
(the first was in 1883, which also burned the city core).
Even now, eight years later, friends confuse my fire and
a fire set simultaneously by an aggrieved lover to his former
girlfriend's house (which gave me, a former volunteer fireman, a
chance to help in the attempt to save my house) with the twenty
or so fires the pyro set during those frantic months of flame and
fear
The link is the fear — even those not bom when the
Great Astoria Fire obliterated the city center 75 years ago felt
a visceral backdraft of memory; a collective dread Astoria might
bum again. Every siren evoked a pervasive silence that height­
ened the echoing shriek of ambulance, police car or fire truck.
Each time it seemed as if the city held its breath and only the
siren was palpable — until it stopped (like the buzz-bombs of
World War 2 which augured death and destruction when their
motors suddenly cut off and they fell onto whoever was haples­
sly underneath them).
The young man caught and convicted of torching
Astoria in the early months of 1989 turned out to be the son of a
fireman wrfio apparently abused the boy. He set fire to Longview
(Wash) structures in his first surge of revenge against his fire­
fighting father He spent a few years in jail. Outside he drifted
downriver and set off his matchbook where we live. A letter to
The Daily Astorian vividly illuminates those days of terror:
"Who is trying to kill us? Why all the fire? We are like
guards in our own home. Afraid to sleep, weary at work, afraid
to go anywhere, hoping we have a home to come back to."
I remember the volunteer firemen from Lewis & Clark
who almost fried trying to get to the body of Coleman Schleiss
upstairs in my house when suddenly the stairs they climbed
collapsed in flames. They survived only because their comrades
instantly immersed them in hose spray. One of them, a good
friend whom I have ever since regarded with gratitude and
respect for what he did that day, told me it was the hottest fire
he had ever fought. I winder how he might have considered the
1922 fire.
Here is where the personal expands — the lone soldier’s
tragedy a tributary vein overflowing a deluge. If my friend and I
had been firemen when Astoria conflagrated 75 years ago we
would have been at considerably more disadvantage than at my
fire or others we have been called out to extinguish.
The first absurdity we would have encountered (wXiich
firemen in those days must have long dreaded) was the city's
plumbing system, little more than a medieval maze of wooden
troughs, though most seem to have been enclosed. When
firefighters depended upon a reliable water supply for their
hoses these water mains were part of the conflagration rather
than its solution. And their hoses burst on the hot streets.
Can you imagine how hard they must have worked to
stop the fire? Every time they lost a street they fought for the
next one, breathing smoke (no respirators or face masks), burn­
ing up in sweat from the inferno yet chilled by a cold night wnd
that fanned the fire. Block after block consumed by flames,
forcing firefighters to retreat as the fire irresistibly advanced.
"Firemen fought to save City Hall and St. Mary's Hospital.
Patients were removed to Astoria High School," Walter Mattila
wrote in the Astorian/Budget commemorating the fire's 25th
anniversary in 1947 "Where there was no water, dynamite was
substituted. Hotels, dwellings and street intersections went up
and the fire went on."
The Great Astoria Fire was comparable in its local effect
to the fires that swept through Rome (64AD), London (1666)
Chicago (1871) and San Francisco (1906) The fire burned for
22 hours, destroyed 32 blocks in the city's heart and left at least
2000 homeless Three persons died (one possibly an unrelated
suicide) and damages were estimated at nearly $30 million. The
fires origins were never determined. Aid poured in from all over:
Portland contributed $53,000, and Victor Astor in New York sent
$5000.
Mattila wrote that by 1922 "Astoria was an out-of-date
city of deteriorating wooden buildings (Its) waterfront had been
built up for making money in handling grain, shanghaiing and
fleecing its large male population of seamen, fishermen and
loggers. This waterfront empire was dying The town still retain­
ed the name of a wide-open hangout but the money in crime
was gone So was the big shipping of the 1870s and '80s.The
cannery empire was past its prime. The Chinese and Hindus
employed in the canneries and mills were gone" and left behind
"their combustible shacks."
The fire started a few minutes after 2 a m. on Dec. 8 It
raged all day. "(The) fire kept on coming, north, south, east and
west, often breaking out far ahead of the cauldron at the heart of
the doomed city," Mattila wrote in his article. "Power failed, gas
mains burst and blazed. Cars, trucks, vtfieelbarrows, and
stooped backs and held-out arms carried away goods from
stores. Stacks of office furniture, phonographs, records boxes
and bundles of articles, fur coats, dishes, lodge paraphernalia,
all the goods of the city, were heaped back of the fire They had
to be moved again as the fire advanced (Looters snatched
goods, broke into stores and carried off stocks in the guise of
PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK WOODFIELD
helping out )lt was bright as day in Astoria except in basements,
inner rooms and where smoke rolled thick."
Headlines in Oregon newspapers that day told the story:
Astoria's Heart in Ruins
City Destroyed by Flames
Fire Razes 35 Blocks
Astoria Business District Destroyed
Telephone Girls Stick Until Flames Reach Building
Stores & Offices in Fiery Pile
Astoria Swept by Greatest Conflagration in NW History
Among buildings "razed by the mad sweep of flames"
(Portland Telegram):
Weinhard Hotel, BeeHive Department Store, Haefer Confec­
tionery, J.C. Penny Store, Astoria Budget newspaper plant, Astoria
Theater, Odd Fellow Hall, 1st National Bank, Astoria Savings Bank,
Western Union Telegraph Office, Merwyn Hotel, Staples Motor Com­
pany, Elks Club, Astoria National Bank, Columbia Trust & Savings
Company, Bank of Commerce, Skallerud's Drygoods Store, Astoria
Drug Store, Central Drug Store, Dayton Drug Store, Owl Drug Store,
Allen & Lewis Wholesale Grocery, Mason-Ehrman Wholesale Grocery,
Blue Mouse Theater, Liberty Theater, Star Theater, YWCA Building,
Astoria Business College, Morning Astorian, North Star Hotel, Troy
Laundry, Astoria Opera House, Methodist Church, Baptist Church,
Central Fire Station...
FIRE DESTROYS CITY
The business district of Astoria burned up this morning.
All of forty blocks of the business section of the city have been
consumed by the conflagration.
The fire started about 2 o'clock this morning in the
basement of Thiel's pool hall, vtfiich was near the BeeHive
department store, on 12th and Commercial Streets. It is not
known as yet how the fire originated. The fire spread under
the streets, vtfiich in this section of the city are built on pilings.
The fire broke up above the surface in three or four different
parts of the city. When once above the surface the fire spread
rapidly in the face of a strong wind. The wooden buildings
caught fire quickly and flamed up like tinder, spreading the
fire from block to block in a few moments.
The city is now a smoldering heap of ruins from
Exchange Street to the waterfront and from 7th Street to
17th Street. In this area all the buildings were burned except
the Spexarth building, 6th and Commercial Streets, and the
Lower Columbia Creamery Plant, 9th and Duane Streets,
which being fireproof buildings were not totally destroyed.
The devastated area contained over fifty large buildings
such as hotels, large department stores, restaurants, office
buildings, etc., which are completely burned to the ground
The city's four banks are a heap of ashes. About forty garages,
filled with new and used automobiles, were consumed by the
angry flames
The total damage done by the conflagration will amount
to over $30 million.
The city fire department could not check the flames as
they quickly spread from building to building. A call for help was
sent to Portland A fire boat from Portland amved at 4 o'clock.
More fire apparatus arrived from Portland on the 5:15 train.
Three fire trucks also arrived in good time from Portland. By
the joint efforts of the twa fire departments the conflagration
has now been checked.
It is impossible to say at this time how many persons
have been killed in the fire, as reports concerning the fatalities
are conflicting and unreliable. Among the dead are reported to
be Mr Norris Staples, president of the Bank of Commerce, a
sailor from the bark Oneonta was drowned at the O.W.R &N.
docks as the roof of a burning building fell on him
Relief headquarters have been opened at the YMCA
building The Seaside Hotel at Seaside has been opened and
is offering shelter for those vtfio lost their homes A free bus
leaves the Y building and all those wshing to go to Seaside
are requested to call at the Y.
Mayor (James) Bremner has called a general meeting
of the businessmen and the city officials, to meet at the City Hall
at 2 o clock this afternoon Relief measures wll be discussed.
-DAILY TOVERI, Dec 8. 1922 (ASTORIA. ORE )
Mattila named a few of the Astoria firemen vtfio fought
The Big Fire: Mel Grimberg, Otto K. Banksund, Doby Backlund,
Os Maunula, Henry Jochimsen, Tiny Arrigoni, Clarence McCoy,
Dutch McCrosky, Frank Smart. Paul Kearney, Fred Layzell,
Tony Antonich, Tim Aldrich, Harry Yeager, Fred Layzenn, Arvid
Heinonen, Jack Corocoran, Victor Aulin, Sam Berg, Al Graichen,
Leo Fumey, Al Davis, Jimmy Coffin, Walter Christofferson, Joe
Shamberger, Wayne Osterby — and Fire Chief Charles Foster,
veteran of the 1883 fire and newly elected Vice President of the
Pacific Coast Fire Chiefs Association.
The three who died were Norris Staples, president of the
Bank of Commerce and owner of Staples Motor Company, who
dropped dead of a heart attack pushing a car to safety; Jack
Comelisen, a seaman aboard the tugboat Oneonta who fell into
the river misjudging the distance to the 16th St. dock in the
smoke; and a person identified by Mattila as a "logger whose
body was found hanging the next morning under the Sanborn
dock.”
By 6am., "all of Astoria that once stood on stilts (over
the river) was burning," Mattila wrote. "From then on the fire was
gradually put under control, with some losses. Late in the day
snow fell over the black ruins of the old Astoria, but melted in
the embers that glowed for weeks while the new Astoria was
bom. Astorians, all of them, as if their spirits had been temper d
in fire, took on the task of rebuilding their city. In the blackest
hour of destruction there was no wailing voice of defeat."
The Portland Telegram said the same thing on Dec.8:
"Astoria is calmly listing its losses, and already thinking how it
will rebuild." The Telegram said in its lead article on Page 1 that
"probably a total of 32 blocks in the retail heart of the city were
destroyed beyond repair, and around this is a fringe of partly
damaged buildings, many of which wll have to be tom dowi."
At the end of the day Astoria's heart was a smoldering
ruin or had dropped into the river and sizzled. Three people
were dead, hundreds homeless. My Bond St.apartment house
was 22 years old, same as the century. It was on the westward
fringe of the fire's final advance. City Hall, on the east end, also
survived but the fire killed it as the center of municipal adminis­
tration. A decade later the city abandoned it for a downtown
bank building built since the fire. Before the fire the deteriorating
downtowi was slowly abandoned by business and politics east­
ward to a newer section of the city.The fire altered that migration
and the city center was resurrected on its ruins, similar to the
regrowth of forests after fire.
Compared to its hillside dwellings, dowitown Astoria is
relatively young, most of it having been reconstructed from the
ruins of the Great Astoria Fire. Though the city repaired itself,
substituting landfill for flammable pilings and piers along the
riverfront, the boom days had long been over before the fire and
they never came back. At present, as a result of rather slap­
dash and ill-conceived redecoration of building fronts as well as
neglect and deterioration, the dowitowi area as a whole looks
shabby and out of focus despite heroic attempts to improve a
few buildings Recently the City Council declared dowitown a
historical district.
Not quite Walter Mattila's vision of a city reborn from the
flames, Astoria is in search of another renewal through salvage
of its despoiled past. Old Astoria is the engine that drives
present day Astoria, manipulated by a self-promoting tourist
industry that scrubs out the grime of the city's reckless history
to display a Disneyland-like "Gay 90s" fantasy vtfiile advertising
Astoria as a "Museum Without Walls". The Big Fire of 1922 —
the faultline of Astoria's history separating in public memory the
boom times from the insipid — might realistically be called the
city's high water mark.
I nurture an illusory romance with Astoria, a paradox
illustrated by a woman I made my muse of the city (similar to
symbolisms of women as Liberty & Justice, Earth & Nature),
though she has lived in several elsewheres for most of the time
I have knowi her. I am credited with knowledge of local history
but I know next to nothing — except I feel a direct empathy with
my predecessors whose lives I feel mine warps into as I occupy
their space in a later time.
I usually don't think of the Big Fire when I walk down­
town, nor I wll bet do most others I see on the sidewalks or
driving past on streets that were blackened rubble or fallen in
flames into the river It's probably the same in war blasted cities
rebuilt since the World Wars, new generations trodding upon
unseen and barely remembered tragedies of the past
-MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER