OPINION

OLD NEWS: Pavement washed away and set itself on fire

Archeaologists for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department Kristina Boykin (left) and Jason Eads in December 2016 measure a section of wood block pavers discovered underground while building the current Broadway Bridge. (Democrat-Gazette file photo)
Archeaologists for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department Kristina Boykin (left) and Jason Eads in December 2016 measure a section of wood block pavers discovered underground while building the current Broadway Bridge. (Democrat-Gazette file photo)

There was "a big fire" in Little Rock's downtown 100 years ago this week, but nothing burned down. Some things burned up.

It was a sewer fire. Stuff caught fire inside a tunnel section of the long, partly open sewer called the Town Branch.

Old News made a little headway May 18 explaining the Town Branch, a former seasonal creek that cut a ditch from Eighth Street across what is now downtown before meandering through what is now the River Market District and on into marshy verges of the Arkansas River. By 1920, the branch was a sewer, mostly enclosed, but a hodgepodge of pipes and fed in part by sanitary sewer lines. An unmitigated section of open sewer remained.

Old News talked about that while describing a flood caused after debris from a collapsed wall of open sewer caused a flood that tore up a lot of wooden-block street pavement. (April flowers brought May showers brought May floods.)

Not a week later, unpleasant smoke wafted through downtown. At 8:31 p.m. May 23, 1920, someone called the Central Station and Fire Company No. 8 responded, as the Arkansas Gazette reported the next day. Led by Capt. J.M. Gray, first they crawled into the sewer on Main Street between Second and Third streets and hunched their way toward Scott Street, but after groping about in the darkness made an exit.

They re-entered the sewer at Second and Main and started toward Scott there. They found the fire in the alley, or below it. Fire Company No. 1 showed up to help feed the water hose into the sewer.

According to Captain Gray, wooden blocks recently washed from the city streets and timber which also washed into the sewer by the recent rains, were ablaze. He said that the fire originated either from steam pipes against which the wood was lodged, or sewer or carbide gas. No damage resulted.

So, the street washed away and then somehow set itself on fire.

Unstated here is the fact that these wooden blocks were soaked in creosote.

Flaming creosote.

Little Rock streets were paved in creosote-soaked wooden blocks in 1913. We know from editorials in the Arkansas Democrat and Gazette in 1919 and 1920 that those wood-block "pavers" had worn out their welcome among editors.

"Wood Block Paving in Little Rock, Arkansas," an essay by one John B. Woods in the May 1920 City Edition of The American City magazine, reviewed them as having lived up well enough to the promise of resistance to traffic and silence under heavy wheels. But "one cannot say wood paving has been an unqualified success in this southwestern city," Woods wrote.

"Neither is it fair to condemn it. There are so many difficult conditions to deal with in this trying climate that a reasonable term of experimentation should be allowed."

There were 11 miles of wood-block paving in the city, he noted, and streets were 30 feet wide. The pavers had been laid upon 4- to 5-inch-thick cement blankets sitting on sand.

"During hot days they lay under the sun, oozing out their creosote and tar," he wrote, "and then when the showers came they buckled into hundreds of small hills; until in certain cases the street cars were unable to pass over the hummocks between the rails."

City workers hauled off enough of this buckled parquet to allow cars to pass, and then they dumped the debris in a pile behind City Hall.

"But one night there came a particularly severe storm," Woods wrote, "and the flood water coursed down along one of the waterfront streets, slipped under a stretch of buckling block pavement, and carried it away bodily. Something like 300,000 blocks went sailing down the Arkansas River."

Woods wrote that during the eight or nine years since their installation, the pavers held up best downtown, where traffic was heavy. A city street commissioner he quoted, F.J. Donahue, thought the shadows cast by tall buildings downtown helped preserve the wood by reducing how much they oozed and by buffering repeated bouts of dehydration. In residential areas, though, cross streets were paved in gravel, and traffic coming off them tracked that abrasive onto the wooden pavers, aggravating what Woods said was weakness due to sloppy workmanship.

Oh yes. He also blamed laborers for the worse condition of the pavers on residential streets, describing these men with a jaw-droppingly confident assertion of racial characteristics. Dear Reader, if you wish to read Woods' essay, find it for yourself. Old News is not handing out such links.

But here is a link to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette report from December 2016, when excavations made for the construction of the current Broadway Bridge uncovered sections of that old parquet pavement: arkansasonline.com/525bridge.

24 HOURS A DAY

All that to say this: In 1920, the Little Rock Fire Department was 27 men short of the manpower required for a good rating from insurance providers. Why? In part — the men said — because they all had to work 24 hours a day, with only four days off a month.

The day after the sewer fire (and some other fires), firemen delivered a petition — signed by every member of the department as well as their chief — to the city Fire and Finance Committee. The petition requested a two-platoon system. The men wanted to work shifts.

The petition said the men were all members of International Fire Association Local No. 34.

"Under the present system in Little Rock" — the petitioners declare, "a fireman is almost a stranger in his own home. He has not the pleasure that other men enjoy of visiting the home life which is so necessary to keeping up his morale and keeping good men satisfied in the service. His sons and daughters have had to be reared almost without his care and guidance, and he has almost no time at home, his only time being four days per month."

A few days later, the Little Rock chapter of the Order of American Firemen announced it would reinstate annual memorials to honor men killed in the line of duty and hold a ceremony June 1. Annual memorials had been discontinued in 1910, according to the May 28 Democrat, because "it was deemed inadvisable to hold the parade which wended its way to the various cemeteries where former members of the department are buried."

The chapter intended to honor five men killed while fighting fires and a sixth who died while stringing wire for a fire alarm — the pole fell on him.

Although every member of the City Council and the mayor said they wanted a two-platoon system, the idea was tabled July 9 because the finance committee concluded it would cost $40,000 a year.

The firemen appeared to have better luck in North Little Rock. On Nov. 16, aldermen there voted to begin a two-platoon system on March 12, 1921. And on Feb. 21 of that year, they adopted the system. Three new firefighters were hired, and a fourth was in the budget.

But on June 13, 1921, North Little Rock Mayor E.B. Gardner announced the city budget was in drastic need of overhauling, and the fire department was too expensive. He reinstated the old single shift.

At some point later in the past — that Old News will eventually reach as we creep forward one old year at a time — working conditions did improve for fire crews in Central Arkansas. But it didn't happen in May 1920.

Email:

cstorey@adgnewsroom.com

Style on 05/25/2020

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