Last week I discussed the colorful history of the volunteer fire companies in 19th-century Little Rock. Today I will summarize the transition to a professional fire department, an agency which has played a major role in protecting the city and its people for over a century.
The Little Rock City Council created a full-time professional fire department on Feb. 8, 1892, with the passage of an ordinance specifying the hiring of a "chief, six drivers of engines and hose carts, one driver for [the] hook and ladder truck, three engineers, two tillermen [who help guide the fire engines, often from the rear of the vehicle] and 17 firemen for the respective engines [and] trucks."
Given unsuccessful efforts in recent years to require municipal employees to live within the city, it is interesting to note that the 1892 ordinance required all the officers and firefighters "to be citizens of Little Rock." Although the motion to require residency was made by a black councilman, Green W. Thompson, it was seconded by a white colleague, and passed easily.
It appears that most of the employees of the new fire department were recruited from the membership of the various volunteer fire companies. It is amazing that anyone would join the force since they were on duty 24 hours each day, having only one day off weekly!
In addition to providing most of the new department's work force, the volunteer companies also provided much of the equipment and structures. Instead of buying horses to pull the engines, the city paid a fee to private hack drivers to transport the engines.
Known as "Jehus" [after an ancient king known for his war chariots], hack drivers were ubiquitous in 1890s Little Rock as they drove delivery wagons, ran errands, and carried passengers throughout the city.
The hack drivers were alert for fire alarms, as one writer observed in the Arkansas Gazette: "When an alarm of fire was given by successive strokes of the engine house bell, followed by slow strokes giving the number of the ward in which the fire was located, there was a scramble among the hack drivers to reach the engine house first, as the one who took his team first to the machine and took it to the fire and returned it to the engine house was paid $5 for his services."
Among the early fire chiefs in Little Rock was Robert McKay, a native of Scotland, who retired in 1899 but was soon persuaded to return though he died soon thereafter. On Jan. 1, 1902, Charles S. Hafer succeeded McKay as fire chief and inaugurated a 40-year era of modernization and expansion. Among Hafer's major accomplishments was transitioning the department to motorized vehicles.
The first motorized fire vehicle was a "hose and chemical combination truck," which not only hauled fire hoses but also carried a 40-gallon tank of fire-suppressing chemicals. It was delivered Sept. 12, 1911, and cost $5,000. Six months later the city's first aerial ladder arrived, an American LaFrance truck fitted with a 75-foot wooden aerial ladder. The city's first pump truck capable of delivering 1,000 gallons of water per minute was purchased in 1916 for $11,210.
Another of Chief Hafer's accomplishments was convincing the city to build a central fire station. Located on West Markham Street next to City Hall, the Little Rock Central Fire Station remains a magnificent building today--and a reminder that our ancestors built outstanding public structures.
A number of local fire stations were inherited from the volunteer fire companies, and new ones were built steadily. In 1916 a station was constructed in the recently annexed Pulaski Heights on what would become Kavanaugh Boulevard.
Another investment was needed to develop a fire alarm system. The city connected all of its five stations with telephones in 1881, not long after they became available. An alarm system of some sort was in place by 1922 when the Arkansas Democrat reported that "a six-circuit switchboard, six-circuit repeater or transmitter, and a double bank storage battery" were housed in the central fire station to receive messages from 74 fire alarm boxes scattered about the city.
I am not sure when the Little Rock firefighters established a labor union, but on Aug. 27, 1917, the members of Firemen's Local 15645 voted to notify the city of a strike unless salaries were increased. The city responded with a $15 raise in monthly pay. Later the Little Rock union joined with the AFL-CIO in forming the International Association of Firefighters. Today Little Rock firefighters are represented by Local 34 of that Association.
The Little Rock Fire Department hired its first black firefighter in April 1969 when Floyd Burns was recruited. A female firefighter was not hired until March 1980. Rhoda Mae Kerr, who served 2003-2008, was the first female chief. Today the department is led by a black chief, Gregory L. Summers.
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in rural Hot Spring County. His son, Neil Q. Dillard, is a Little Rock firefighter. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 02/07/2016