Four Canadian Firemen Die in Suspicious Fire
Four firemen, three of them members of the Peterboro, Ontario, Fire Department, and the other a volunteer who was attempting to help, met death on May 19, last, during a fire which climaxed a series of unprecedented blazes in the neighborhood, most of them of suspicious origin.
The catastrophe struck while Ontario fire investigators were in Peterboro where they had been probing the other blazes. It was the most destructive of seven major outbreaks in less than a week.
The four fire fighters were trapped in the ruins of the collapsed upper two floors of a large four-story building in downtown Peterboro that housed modern stores on the main floor, offices above, and apartments in the top portion. The building was D-shaped, facing on two streets. It half surrounded another four-story brick joist structure on the corner and was separated from it by fire walls.
The burned out building contained these stores, all of which were gutted: Tip Top Tailors; Pulvers’ Ladies Wear; Ed Riley’s Men’s Wear and the Agnew Surpass Show Store. Damaged by smoke and water in the adjoining building were a drug store, dry goods shop and stationery shop.
The fire was discovered by Constable Douglas Farthing about 5:15 a.in., when he saw a rear window of the shoe shop blow out and flames in the inside of the building. He turned in an alarm and hurried to the front of the building to awaken tenants of the apartments, three of whom had a narrow escape from death.
The fire spread rapidly and the building was quickly involved in flames.
Firemen fought the blaze for several hours front the outside, using ladder streams and hand lines, and from the interior lines were advanced to try to prevent the spread of the flames.
It was not until about five hours after the fire was discovered that the walls began to crumble, weakened by the hot fire. At about 10:45 A. M.. when the fire was believed under control, the main rear wall of the building fell. This was followed by further collapse. Six men were trapped when the floor on which they Were operating dropped into the center of the building.
Fellow firemen rushed to rescue the victims. While this effort was being made, a wall fell in on three other firemen, two of whom were pulled to the street with serious injuries. Two other firemen had been injured in other mishaps earlier, during the height of the fire.
All city ambulances were rushed to the scene. Six times within five minutes men were carried out, placed in the ambulances and dispatched to the hospital. At 11:00 A.M., fully six hours after the fire started, police were still calling for more ambulances.
The four dead were finally removed from under 12 feet of wreckage and rubble hours later. They were listed as: Grover Beck, Orville Rome, George Reynolds, all city firemen, and Earl Spenceley, well known city florist, who volunteered as a fire fighter. Admitted to Peterboro Civic and St. Joseph hospitals were: Adelard Binnette, Robert
Reynolds. Peter Nicholson, John Laplante, Victor Barrie, Harold Black and Virgil Car, assistant chief. Later John Masters and William J. Bloom, firemen, were taken to Civic hospital. Two other casualties were Hubert Kennedy, whose foot was broken in a fall from a ladder, and volunteer fireman Robert Webb and William Bloom and John Masters, also firemen.
Injuries to firemen reportedly incapacitated one-third of the entire fire fighting force of the city. Normally 15 firemen work on each of the three daily shifts. All off-duty firemen were called when Chief George Smith took charge.
While crowds estimated at 10.000 persons silently watched, firemen removed dangerous sections of wall and dug in the ruins to reach the dead.
Peterboro’s wave of fires started a week to a day before the major and fatal blaze, when a house on the city’s northern outskirts was entered while its owners were away and two fires were started inside, one in a bedroom and one in the basement. Five days later the house immediately next door burst into flames.
Four district fires were also reported in the period, some of which occurred under suspicious circumstances. The Sunday before the fatal downtown fire, a $10,000 blaze broke out in nearby North Monaghan township; the next day a house was gutted in Douro township. On Wednesday the Moldaver Lumber Company burned with $25,000 damage, and a serious sawmill fire broke out at Apsley, 40 miles north of Peterboro.
The fatal fire of May 19th caused estimated property loss of $500,000.
