Fire Service
Robert Service knew first hand the terror that fire can bring. The following is from the Whitehorse Star Newspaper, 90th Anniversary Edition, Saturday, June 15 1990
Robert Service Helped Fight Blaze
Fire was always a great fear in a frontier town where closely built tents and wooden buildings all using every sort of wood stove mad fire almost a certainly.Whitehorse had prepared itself for just such an emergency with a fire hall, rolls of hose, fire engine and a well organized fire brigade. In the early morning of May 23, 1905, however, human error caused the entire business section of the the town to burn down.
Bank of Commerce teller Robert Service was part of the fire brigade that morning and remembers the blaze in his autobiography "Ploughman of the Moon"
"One morning in early spring we were aroused by the fire siren. It was around three o'clock and we cursed as we rushed to the scene. It was a grey dawn, evil and askew. Others passed us pulling on their clothes as they ran. I heard them cry: It's the White Pass Hotel' (Windsor) . . . Smoke was poring from the building but as yet there was no sign of fire . . . the hotel was only a hundred yards away from the pumphouse. We could get two streams on the fire and quickly mast it. Everything was in place awaiting the water . . . how long it seemed to be in coming! But the engine had to be started and the engineer had lost his head . . . hose in hands, with nozzles pointing we waited , prayed cursed . . .
Thank God! at last the pipes swelled and the strong jets shot out. We were saved. We would soon get the fire under control. We inundated the centre of the building where the smoke was thickest. It faltered almost died away . . . suddenly , to our horror, the saving stream ceased. Not a drop of water came forth. At the same time the fire, as if mocking our dismay, burst out again. "Quick see what's wrong!' shouted the crowd, and a rush was made to the pump room.
Men were yelling frantically for water. Then I could see them dragging out the wretched engineer, who seemed to be in a state of collapse. I heard a show to panic; there's no more water in the tanks. He's let them run dry. Were lost, we can't fight the fire! . . . And there they stood staring at those limp hose pipes from which no water came. We were helpless and, even as we looked, the fire as if in triumph shot out a great blaze of flame that dominated the smoke. The holocaust was under way."
The end of the fire was the burning down of most of the business community on front street between steel and elliot and down Main Street to Second Ave. Bank of Commerce employees, Robert Service among them formed a bucket brigade and prevented sparks and the intense heat of the blaze from igniting the Bank of Commerce premises which were, at that time , on the west corner of Second and Main.
Click to Return to Back to Service Archives
