Dan Gaines, former chief of the Mount Vernon Fire Department, gave a focus of the historical fires in Mount Vernon and how they changed the community at the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center Thursday, Oct. 9. The talk happened during National Fire Prevention Week.
Gaines, a second generation firefighter, served for nearly 30 years as a firefighter and roughly a decade as chief.
“All I wanted to be from a young generation was a chance to be a firefighter,” Gaines said.
Gaines cleared up one piece of information that has been misinterpreted. The City of Mount Vernon first established a city ordinance which required any building built in the fire district to be built of fire resistant material. That was created in March 1877.
One of the first big fires in the community was the 1878 fire that destroyed the James Smyth and Son Woollen Mill. The business did rebuild as a flour mill.
“That was the first fire that revealed the need for a fire department,” Gaines said.
In August 1879, the City of Mount Vernon purchased their first fire engine for $750 from Consolidated Fire Engine Company of Chicago.
The department was established shortly after.
That first fire truck was one where the department mixed soda ash and sulfuric acid together in water tanks.
“The tanks weren’t very big, and the truck had to be pulled down the street by members of the fire department,” Gaines said. “As such, it couldn’t carry a whole lot of water.”
In 1880, the fire department had one of their first large fires when the Gough’s Grocery Store, Young’s Clothing Store and W.G. Power’s Drug Store caught fire.
“What made that fire worse is we discovered that the city and township records were kept in the stores, which means a lot of the early history of the city were burned down in the fire,” Gaines said.
The next fire was one that the young fire department was ridiculed over. In 1890, the department was disbanded.
Another fire in 1893 for Hogle Bros Drug Store and J.S. Smiths destroyed the building. That fire reinstituted the need for a new fire department.
In Feb. 1894, the fire department was reorganized.
Right after they had been reorganized, the department was able to respond to the W.H. Doudy’s Dry Goods Store fire promptly, able to put out a fire quick before it spread and reiterate why that department was needed.
In July 1894, the Wolfe Brothers Corner and Ellison’s Harness shops were destroyed in a fire.
“That’s what started citizens demanding a waterworks system for better firefighting equipment,” Gaines said. “A special election was held in Sept. 28, 1897 and the bond passed to install a waterworks system.”
That new water tower was installed on the Cornell College campus.
In 1898, the fire department added a hose company and hook and ladder company to help respond to fires.
In 1924, the department responded to the Old Seminary fire on Cornell College Campus.
They were able to save the majority of the building, but the roof and fourth floor of that building needed to be demolished, and when the top floors of Old Sem were reconstructed, they went with a pitched roof instead.
The Old Sem fire was one where the department realized they needed a fire engine. In March 1925, the council approved buying a Ford Chassis engine for the department to haul the chemical engine to fires.
In 1929, the department realized that the Ford Chassis did not have enough power to get up hills in muddy conditions in the community, and a new chassis was purchased.
The next largest fire in the community was the Hedges lumberyard fire in March 24, 1931.
“That lumber yard was a coal yard, lumber yard and grain store,” Gaines said. “The fire was so intense because of the coal yard that the smoke could be seen as far away as the Quad Cities.”
A lack of water pressure at the fire hydrant and cold temperatures made fighting that fire more difficult. The fire department ordered a pump truck in May 1931.
In 1939, Mount Vernon also entered a partnership with Franklin Township on responding to fires.
The Iowa Electric Building fire in Jan. 17, 1954, was one of the next large fires.
“Temps were very cold, 12 degrees below zero, which made fighting the fire so hard,” Gaines said.
The Iowa Electric Company building and next door buildings reduced their heights by a story each.
The Stoltz Cleaners fire in Aug. 29, 1965, was another large fire.
Chris Stoltz said that the building was only five years old when that fire hit, and it gutted the inside of the building.
“I remember I was out of town at the time with my sister and her husband, as they were showing animals at the fair,” Stoltz said. “We had just come back to town from the state fair and saw the fire at the stoplight at Hwy. 1. Most of the fire was out at the time, but was very extensive.”
The building was rebuilt within a year and the business reopened.
The May 8, 1967 Hawkeye Newspaper fire was pretty devastating, damaging the press and much of the building. They had to lift a safe that had been on the first floor from the basement, as the floor had collapsed in the building.
The Holiday House Fire in Feb. 16, 1969 was one Gaines remembers.
“We had four ushers who were firefighters, and two firefighters in the congregation, plus Rev. Reemer was a member of the fire department,” Gaines said. “The sirens went off during the sermon, and firefighters were ready to run, but sat back down until pastor dismissed them. His sermon that Sunday was all of five minutes long.”
Then came the big Main Street Fire of 1975, which took out several businesses including the Strand Movie Theater, American Legion Hall and city hall.
“One of the contributing factors in that fire is there was a space in the basement of Hassels that stretched from the basement up to the attic, and once it hit the attic, it just spread across that entire block of buildings,” Gaines said. “It was very hard to fight because it had so many open areas.”
Two people were injured fighting that fire as well.
The Irwin’s Convenience Store fire was Feb. 1, 1980. The building was not rebuilt and became part of Memorial Park.
“That fire was not discovered right away, and made it through the roof,” Gaines said.
The Daman’s 66 building had two fires in their car bay in the 1980s. The first was in 1982, and the building had strawboard for the ceiling, which allowed the fire to spread quickly. It started from a car up on the lift being worked on.
In 1984, they had a second fire, but Gaines said that the replacement of sheetrock in the office area and the bay kept the fire to a minimum.
The Alger’s Pizza Palace fire in Feb. 16, 1996 was complicated because of numerous remodels to the building.
“They had kept stacking roofs and attics on top of one another with each remodel, which made it much harder to get to the fire,” Gaines said.
The business did rebuild.
The J and D Locker fire in 2006 was one where the business did not rebuild.
Gaines said that the building had a two foot gap from the exterior wall and some of the coolers. The fire started at the outside wall and it was hard for firefighters to get access to the fire to fight it.
The Scorz fire occurred in Feb. 13, 2008. The fire had started right around noon, and like most the fires in winter months, fighting cold temperatures and numbers for the department in town at the moment curtailed how immediately the fire could be responded to.
“The first factor for firefighters was rescuing people than it was for fighting the fire,” Gaines said. “There was an Alliant Energy bucket truck in the area that was able to rescue two of the people and a firefighter.”
The last significant fire was the Don Mar Bowling Alley fire in Aug. 9, 2015.
Gaines said that was right after he had retired from the department, and he had heard the sirens going off.
“Even after being retired, I still have to see where the fire engines are going,” Gaines said. “When I stepped out of my house, I could see the smoke.”
Gaines said one of the issues that made the building hard to fight was the bow roof over the building and a remodel in the late 1990s added an additional roof overtop of the other building.