Stop 33 – The New Fire House

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THE 1972 FIRE HOUSE AND BETTER NOZZLES

In the mid-nineteen-fifties, firefighters started working toward a bigger station for their growing department. It took years, but on October thirteenth, nineteen seventy-one, voters passed a bond issue of two hundred ninety-eight thousand dollars for a fire and rescue building. It was finished in December of nineteen seventy-two, and City Hall and the police station were added later.

Nozzles changed a lot over the years, too. Early nozzles simply narrowed the stream, and they couldn't be shut off. Later ones had shut-off valves. Soon after nineteen hundred came combination nozzles, which could switch from a straight stream to a wide fog without stopping the flow.

There were special nozzles, too. The cellar nozzle worked like a giant sprinkler head for basement fires. And the Eastman deluge set, bought in the nineteen-twenties, could throw a powerful stream from far away onto a big fire.

THE GRAND HOTEL FIRE, 1970

At seven fifty-seven on the evening of December sixth, nineteen seventy, fire broke out in the basement of the Grand Hotel.

The flames found their way into the elevator shafts and laundry chutes, spread through the whole building, and burst through the roof. Seventeen fire departments from Iowa and Nebraska came to help.

The damage to the hotel and the businesses on its first floor came to four hundred seventy-six thousand dollars. Later, a fourteen-year-old boy admitted to the State Fire Marshal and local authorities that he had set the fire.