Show adventurers club Z when the world fell in by FLOYD GIBBONS famous headline hunter djoe GANGWAY ANGWAY for the fire department pull up at the curb and let joe dooley go by dont delay him because hes on mighty important P octant business hes rushing down to the adventurers club to tell the story of the big thrill of his life here lie he is now boys and girls meet joseph dooley of brooklyn N Y all right joe lets have the yarn well says joe that happened in 1903 when I 1 was assigned to engine co company no 11 down on F east ast ll houston street and b bang ang we go right into the story joe was second in command down at old no 11 it was a cold blustery night in january and the alarms had been coming in thick and fast all evening nothing eventful just routine fires you know the kind the ones where the lace curtains blaze up and somebody has pulled them down and stepped on them before the fire department arrived or the ones where a fire starts in a pile of trash in a corner ot of the cellar and the net loss Is two packing boxes and the janitors hat when a 4 alarm rings the fire laddies step the kind of stuff that makes up nine tenths ot of a firemans foremans fi remans work its on only ay once in a while that fire gets beyond control and blazes up in a big conflagration fla that keeps the firemen out all night while the water freezes on the ends of the hoze nozzles big fires are rare now and getting fewer all the 11 time in thanks to fireproof buildings and modern firefighting fire fighting methods but this was 1903 in those days most of the buildings were old wooden ones the night dragged on and then came another alarm number 11 responded and they found the fire a warehouse in cooper square no setup set up this one either it was the plant of the boston excelsior works filled to the rafters with baled excelsior oakum tow and other highly combustible stuff A four alarm had been turned in and a dozen pieces of fire apparatus were there joe Doo leys company had been assigned to a position on the first floor no boys went in through a driveway built tor for t the h e con concerns cerns trucks and v 4 aw I 1 A A I 1 an inferno of flames raged inside the building there they were stopped the blaze inside was so terrific that they enter the building they got their hoses to work managed to push their way 20 feet inside the warehouse and there they stopped again they held their position though held it while the flames beat all around them and turned the water from their hoses into steam as fast as they could pour it on the place was like an oven and the smoke was suffocating they held that position for half an hour until a fifth alarm brought more apparatus to back them up then they moved on to a point 50 feet inside the burning building heavy floor falls on the embattled fire fighters the captain was off that night so joe dooley was in charge of no 11 company hook and ladder co no 9 had been assigned to help him and he ordered them to clear a path between the bales of blazing ax excelsior so the hose could be played more effectively while the firemen from no 9 were clearing that path joe heard a loud creaking sound then fire flared up in the rear of the piles of bales and without further warning the floor above fell down on them it fell with a loud crash says jve killing one man instantly two firemen standing beside me were hurled out through a window by the air concussion caused by the dropping of the floor after being shot through the window these two men kept on running until they tell fell down iq in the street both were hysterical when they were picked up otherwise they were not seriously injured joe was trapped in the burning excelsior factory but joe himself get off on so easily ue lie was standing between two rows of bales and when the floor came down he was knocked flat ile he hit the ground only halt half conscious realizing that lie he was suffocating knowing that he stood in imminent dauger danger of being burned to death hut but unable to move a muscle powerless to do anything to help himself dimly he realized that the falling floor crushed him and as his brain cleared he saw that he had fallen between two bales over which the floor lay like a roof smoke was choking him he had all he could do to breathe but he began disentangling himself from the debris of broken planks and beams that hung from the bottom of the fallen floor and to crawl along through the passage between the bales it takes courage to do what joe did my brain was reeling he be says 1 I know what direction I 1 was going in whether it was the right one my aly head was cut and my leather fire hat had been partly driven down into my skull I 1 wanted to lie down but I 1 knew that it if I 1 did id stay there so I 1 kept crawling on until I 1 saw a gleam of light ahead of me then I 1 knew I 1 was headed in the right direction another few minutes of crawling and joe was safe again out in the driveway from which he had started he was pretty much messed up by the time he got there and he still carries marks of that terrible ordeal but he stayed right in the department fighting fires until his retirement as a chief officer in 1918 and had plenty more adventures some of them almost as exciting as the one hes just told us iq 0 service |