ARCHBOLD WEATHER

Other Editors Say…

Every Fireman Knows


On the icy morning of Dec. 22, 1910, Chicago firefighters rushed to battle a fire in a meatpacking warehouse in the Union Stockyards on the city’s South Side.

The equipment of the day included horse-drawn steam fire engines. The firefighters had only one way to attack the fire: Leap onto a 4-foot-tall loading dock with a rickety wooden canopy, leaving them little room to maneuver.

They leaped. The fire seethed. A wall collapsed, sending six stories of molten brick cascading onto the firefi ghters. Rescuers needed 17 hours to pull the bodies from the ruins of the Nelson Morris and Co. plant.

The staggering death toll: 21 firefighters and three civilians.

No U.S. conflagration claimed more firefighters until the World Trade Center towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.

One hundred years later to the day, Wednesday morning, Dec. 22, 2010, another blaze bloomed to life. An abandoned building in the 1700 block of East 75th Street. Seven miles from the scene of the infamous Stockyards fire.

Another generation of firefighters, facing the same dangers. Knowing that some things don’t change: Fires are unpredictable– but they find shrewd ways to kill.

Without warning, because there rarely is much, a section of roof collapsed. Two Chicago firefighters– Corey Ankum, 34, and Edward Stringer, 47– were killed; 17 others were injured.

One big change since the Stockyards tragedy: television. TV coverage from the vantage of a helicopter hovering overhead immersed morning viewers in Wednesday’s search for survivors.

That remarkable intimacy– we in complete safety, watching firefighters dig for the lost as snow swirled about– was at once unsettling and heartening.

Black-coated, black-hatted, soot-faced rescuers swarmed as if in a hive, heaving pink bricks this way, hauling rubble down a bucket line that way, hefting charred roofing in hope of discovery beneath.

The drama evolved with measures of desperation and selflessness: one firefighter’s decision to plunge headfi rst beneath piled debris in search of his colleagues took our breath away.

In the impersonal realm of statistics, the modern era of better training, sophisticated equipment and fire-resistant buildings has made firefighting less lethal than it once was. But it’s still lethal.

On Aug. 9, Chicago firefi ghter Christopher Wheatley, 31, slipped off a fire-escape ladder at a West Loop restaurant. He became the first Chicago firefighter to die while combating a blaze in more than a decade. (Other firefighters, however, have died in the line of duty, owing to such causes as traffi c accidents.)

Wheatley was the 569th firefighter killed in the line of duty since 1857, according to the Illinois Fire Service Institute.

That list grew by two on Wednesday.

In the aftermath of the Dec. 22, 1910, fire, the Tribune said: “Every fireman knows what a stockyard fire means. The men knew of the treachery of the ancient shells of grease soaked wood and shaky brick walls… Chicago firemen cherish no illusions when they go in to strangle a big fire at the yards with their hands.”

The same could be written today. Firefighters know that every call– any call– can end instantly. Tragically.

Two deadly fires, 100 years apart.

Two fires to remind Chicagoans that charging into a meatpacking plant or the World Trade Center towers or a Southeast Side building requires one thing above all: courage.–Chicago Tribune



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