For The Brookings Register
The recent Brost building fire at 318 Main Ave. was the town’s latest of dozens of blazes that over the years disrupted Brookings businesses.
Even in the city’s earliest years, …
This item is available in full to subscribers.
To continue reading, you will need to either log in to your subscriber account, below, or purchase a new subscription.
Please log in to continue |
The recent Brost building fire at 318 Main Ave. was the town’s latest of dozens of blazes that over the years disrupted Brookings businesses.
Even in the city’s earliest years, owners and city officials have had concerns for the businesses that then were packed cheek by jowl, all built of flimsy wood, long dried out by the sun and hot summer Dakota winds.
Each business then had a wood or coal-burning stove roaring away red-hot in the winter. Stores remaining open evenings used lamps to light the way. It is not an exaggeration to say the town’s business district in the late 1800s was a fire waiting to happen.
But since those combustible early days, Brookings business buildings — and residences — have had to abide by very strict fire codes. Those rules, along with a little luck and the admirable dedication of members of the Brookings Volunteer Fire Department, have held in check most of the fires which in most cases kept blazes from spreading to adjoining structures.
In 1881, Horace Fishback, Sr., was appointed the city’s first fire marshal. As time permitted, he visited homes and businesses to make sure every precaution had been taken to prevent fire.
Fireworks — not faulty construction — is believed to have caused a fire that destroyed the city’s first railroad depot on July 8, 1886. The newly built depot was a tinderbox. Railcars 60 feet away caught fire and had to be moved back to be saved.
A south wind carried sparks north from the depot toward wooden Main Avenue buildings. Volunteer firemen used the town well at Main and Third Street to douse small blazes that started up.
After a fire in the A. B. Allison building at the corner of Third and Main on Sept. 12, 1888, believed to have been caused by an arsonist, the Brookings Press lamented: “The Press hopes extreme measures will be taken to ferret out the person or persons who lurk in the darkness ready to touch the torch to inflammable matter and lay in waste our commercial interests.”
Early on, the city purchased all the latest fire equipment its budget would allow, including hooks on long poles for pulling down wooden walls, ladders, pump wagons and later, wagons with a chemical mixture. “The city now has enough hose to reach to the Baptist Church,” the Sentinel announced Oct. 31, 1890.
It was big news when in 1893 the city bought a “chemical engine.” After it arrived, “the city disposed of the old pumping engine, which was practically useless,” the Register reported.
Augmenting city funds, members of the volunteer fire department raised money themselves to buy fire-fighting gear, as they still do. After a disappointing crowd and a purse of just $25 was raised at the Firemen’s Ball in February 1991, the disgusted Register editor planted tongue firmly in cheek and wrote: “It is the height of folly for a city the size of Brookings to try to maintain a fire department. It makes taxes too high. Insurance rates would be cheaper without it and we would run less risk of having our property destroyed. Why will the citizens of Brookings be so reckless, so extravagant in their donations to the fire department?”
The editorial continued jokingly, suggesting that a special election be held “for the purpose of dissolving the fire department.”
In early March of 1890, with a strong north wind blowing, the Joseph Brook Furniture Store caught fire. In fighting it, the city discovered that the recently constructed city waterworks system left much to be desired.
The water tank, in the alley of the 300 block of Main Avenue, was not full so didn’t provide enough water or water pressure in the hose. And the fire hose from the hydrant burst, causing more loss of valuable time. Citizens showed up to help remove merchandise from the store, and to also move all that could be easily carried from the adjoining buildings which were eventually saved. Total loss for the owner was $4,000, of which insurance covered $2,600.
Just before Christmas in 1892, a fire was discovered at 2 a.m. in C. C. Barr’s Restaurant. By the time firemen arrived, the building was engulfed in flames, so the men concentrated their efforts to save adjoining buildings. The fire department’s Hook and Ladder team, trained in such things, pulled down the walls of the City Drug Store building and the nearby Olson Grocery Store. A keg of powder was lit inside the Hansen Variety Store and that store was partially destroyed by the planned explosion.
Despite all efforts, the blaze spread to the Gaylord Block and destroyed four buildings. Three hours later, at 5 a.m., the fire was out and six buildings were lost with damage estimated at $15,000, which was equivalent then to more than one-half a million dollars today.
A popular wall attachment for business buildings and home fires at that time were small glass containers containing a liquid that could smother a small fire. The containers were called “hand grenades,” and a sample of one of those hand grenades is on the wall in the Brookings County Museum’s rural schoolhouse wall.
Livery stables back then may have had hand grenades on office walls, but the stables still had an affinity for fire. Often, men who had been too long in the cups — and rolled their own smokes — sought refuge for the night in the stables’ hay and straw. And nearby manure piles were also particularly vulnerable tinder boxes.
In November 1881, a fire that could have destroyed all of the buildings on the east side of Brookings’ Main Avenue was discovered before it got a good start in the Thompson and Odegard barn. Someone had dumped a pan of smoldering ashes on a manure pile near the barn.
In April 1890, the large livery barn of A. A. Poole was consumed by fire. Investigating the smoldering ruins after the fire, firemen found among the ashes the remains of nine horses, two cows, a calf, two dogs, buggies, harnesses and sleighs and a bottle that smelled of kerosene.
In April 1898, C. L. Clough’s livery barn caught fire and was destroyed along with 16 horses, buggies and other accoutrements. The barn burned so hot it ignited an adjoining livery stable operated by Taylor Leis. It, too, burned to the ground.
Fires at Brookings businesses continued to be a worry and a constant concern. Dozens of blazes large and small would be fought in downtown Brookings through the years.
In 1905, a fire at Buckingham’s Bakery and Perchel’s Millinery Shop at 310 and 312 Main (which were then very close to today’s Brost building) were destroyed. In 1910, the Brookings House Hotel, located a block south of the Brost lot, caught fire, but all occupants escaped without injury.
A few days before Christmas in 1927, the Cutler Radio Store at 415 Main and Oyloe’s Photographic Studio at 417 Main, were destroyed and businesses adjoining the two buildings were damaged.
In mid-February 1932, the city’s Gambles Store at 323 Main, along with its inventory valued at $7,000, was destroyed by fire, and in March of that year, a block north of Gambles, the Brookings Café was damaged by an early morning blaze.
Businesses beyond the downtown business section were not immune from fire, nor were firemen safe from injury, or worse. In 1934, the College Cleaners at 803 Medary Avenue, which had opened its doors three days earlier, caught fire.
Four members of the Brookings Volunteer Fire Department were injured while fighting that blaze after a gas container in the business exploded. They were Roy Bishman, Cass Wells, Elmer Steen and Dan Carr.
The last person to die in a business district fire in Brookings was LeRoy VanderPool, a renter in the upstairs apartment above Ione’s Café at 423 Main. That fire broke out on an especially cold March 3, 1985, night.
During blizzard conditions, the fire, heavy snow and ice were especially challenging for firemen. Main Avenue was blocked by snow drifts. The 1985 Brookings Register report indicated VanderPool’s loss “was the first known death by fire in Brookings in several years.” The empty Ione’s Café lot remains today as a pocket park for Nick’s Hamburger Shop.
