Stop 4 – Great Western Fire Company Number One

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THE COMPANY

The Great Western Fire Company Number One was organized in eighteen sixty-eight, and was probably named for the nearby Great Western Cereal Factory. Its first engine house stood at Sixth Street and First Corso.

After a disagreement with the City Council, membership dropped off, and in eighteen seventy-two the company reorganized, taking in members from Nebraska City Fire Company Number One. The two stayed together until eighteen seventy-four, when the Great Western moved into its own engine house at ten twenty-two Central Avenue.

The company started out with hand pumpers and hose carts, but soon bought a hand-drawn Babcock chemical engine. They named it the Jennie Carr, after the Western Union telegraph operator in town. In the photo on the left, you can see it in front of the Opera House in eighteen seventy-four. That engine weighed twenty-four hundred pounds and cost the company nineteen hundred fifty dollars.

One more photo worth a look: the four Kastner brothers, photographed in nineteen thirteen, all members of the Great Western.

HOW A CHEMICAL ENGINE WORKED

So how did a chemical engine work? It carried a sixty-gallon tank filled with water and baking soda. When the firemen reached the fire, they added sulfuric acid to the tank. The chemical reaction made carbon dioxide gas, which built up pressure and forced the water out through a small hose.

It was a quick way to attack a small fire within reach. On a big fire, the chemical engine went to work while the heavy steam pumper was still being hauled to the scene and set up.

Chemical firefighting took off in the late eighteen-sixties, when the firm of Babcock and Holloway of Chicago began mounting chemical tanks on hose carts and wagons. They were really just giant fire extinguishers, and they served as a bridge between the steam engines and the modern pumpers that came later.