Researched by FRED S. ALLEN for a story in the Grapevine 1963
While this fire came to be known as the “Hotel Brennan” fire, the fire originated and did most of its damage in the grade floor and basement portion occupied by the Los Angeles Wallpaper and Paint Company.
In the January 24, 1913, issue of the Los Angeles Examiner appeared a most dramatic account of this incident written by an unknown staff writer. For the enjoyment of our GRAPEVINE readers, the Examiner story is reprinted just as it appeared to the citizens of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Examiner
January 24, 1913
Fed by paints, oils and wallpaper of the stock of the Los Angeles Wallpaper and Paint Company, at 529 South Main street, a fire, discovered shortly before 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon, swept from top to bottom of the five-story building with the fierceness of flames in a furnace, inflicting a loss of about $100,000 and furnishing a thrilling spectacle to many thousands of persons during the stubborn fight which lasted till nightfall before the firemen had conquered. The fire started in the rear part of the ground floor of the paint company’s store, but the cause of it is not known. As soon as Chief Eley arrived he saw the seriousness of the menace and a second and a third alarm followed in rapid succession, until all of the fire companies of the central portion of the city were massed in the struggle to keep the flames within the four walls and save what could be saved from the burning building.
Fire Chief Eley, but lately risen from a sick bed, led his men with persistent courage, forcing his way again and again into the gas-choked basement and the first floor, until a final venture into the death tap almost cost him his life.
An explosion of turpentine casks had thrown a group of firemen out through a basement entrance and had covered another group with a mass of wallpaper from shattered shelving. Immediately following the rescue of these men, just before 5 o’clock, Chief Eley, who had already fainted twice from exertion and exposure to choking fumes, made his way from the rear alley forward through the basement, determined to learn personally if there were other stocks of explosive oils that would endanger the lives of his firemen.
Presently the absence of the chief was noticed, and a dozen firemen began a frantic search for him. Firemen J. Reyes of Engine Company No.5 came upon the chief, lying unconscious on the basement floor. Reyes picked Chief Eley up and carried him up a ladder through the sidewalk door. Eley was hurried to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan, unconscious and in a serious condition. He was treated with oxygen, and after an hour recovered consciousness.
J. Reyes, later retired from the LAFD as a Captain, stated that Chief Eley tripped and fell through an open shipping hatch into nine feet of hot water and turpentine in the basement. Reyes left his company and entered the hot water and rescued the chief swimming to the hatch opening where Eley was lifted out of the water with a pike pole. Reyes himself became extremely ill from inhaling the turpentine fumes and the hot water he swallowed making the rescue. However, he was not taken to the hospital or listed among those treated. According to Capt. Reyes, as he recalls the incident, Assistant Chief O’Donnell threatened to dismiss Reyes for leaving his company, but Capt. Stephen Queirolo, a natural leader during those early days, threatened to leave the job if Reyes was penalized for his bravery, so the matter was dropped. Reyes received no recognition for his act.)
The value of stock of the paint company is placed at $60,000. It is a total loss. The furniture of the Brennan was worth about $15,000, and it is almost entirely destroyed by the fire and water. The building, owned by Gustave Brenner of San Francisco, is estimated to have been worth about $75,000, and half of that is the estimate of loss. None of the walls fell. Wing’s Cafe, a chop suey place, which occupied one of the ground floor rooms adjacent to the paint company, suffered a loss of about $5,000.
From 2 o’clock until after 6, Main street and Fifth and Sixth streets were blocked to traffic. Masses of spectators were packed against the ropes at the street corners, and thousands more watched the fire from the roofs of the Kerkoff, Central, Pacific Electric, Security and other tall buildings in the vicinity. A portion of the matinee audience at the Burbank theater had reached the house before the streets were closed, and most of them sat through the play, in ignorance of the thrilling scenes in real life that were being enacted just on the other side of the swinging doors. The Optic theater, next door to the paint store, was filled with an audience watching the moving pictures when the fire was discovered. The manager announced that an accident to the film mechanism compelled a suspension of the entertainment, and the theater was emptied without confusion.
GALLANT FIREMEN KISSED
Rehearsal was on at the Century theater, just north of the burning building. The stage was drenched with water and the rehearsal and evening performance were abandoned. The chorus girls, in their makeup, watched the fire, and, in their enthusiasm over the daring shown by the firemen, rewarded some of them with kisses as they came out of the smoke-filled storerooms for breathing spells. There were thrilling rescues of women in grave peril, but the women were moving picture actresses and the rescuers were actors with terra cotta complexions and black, cornice-like eyebrows. The “movies” man was on hand within half an hour of the time the fire started, with camera and company, and seizing a time when the ladders in front were not in use, the brave rescuers carried limp women down them, while the cameraman worked his crank and shouted hoarse directions. So realistic was all this that a policeman was deceived and, rushing forward, seized an apparently unconscious girl from the arms of an actor and was rushing to an ambulance with her when her friends effected a genuine rescue.
Such was and is the story of one of the great fires Los Angeles firemen have fought. One cannot help but observe how fire reporting has changed!!
THIRTY FIREMEN OVERCOME
Thirty firemen were overcome temporarily by the gas inside the building. Some of them were revived and returned to their work. Some were taken to hospitals for treatment. A second and then a third alarm brought all the downtown fire apparatus to the scene. Twenty lines of hose poured their streams into the building from Main Street, from the alley in the rear and from the roofs of the buildings across the alley. Four engines, the tower, two hook and ladder trucks and three of four hose wagons were grouped at the Main street front.
The firemen fought against great odds, as the combustible stock of the paint store, in the rear of which the fire started, blazed fiercely in spite of the torrents of water that were poured upon it. The flames swept up an air shaft and spread to every floor of the hotel, and down into the basement, where most of the paints and oils were stored. Embers fell all about the block, but with the competent force and equipment Chief Eley had brought to the contest, there was at no time any real danger of the fire spreading beyond the four walls.
The most tense period of the fight came at a time when thousands of watchers thought the spectacle was ended. A sullen roar came from the basement, the muffled report of an explosion, presumably of turpentine casks. Lieutenant J. Smith, R. Conklin and Ed Welte of Engine Company No.24 were entering the basement and they were hurled back to the street by the force of the explosion. On the ground floor a group of firemen were working desperately when an avalanche of wall-paper, jarred from shelves by the explosion, came tumbling down upon them.
FIVE BURIED UNDER DEBRIS
Captain C.F. Blackwell, Howard Dyer and Roy King of Hose Company 23, William Shiller of Engine Company No.7, and J.F. Corneaugh of Truck Company 1 were buried under the debris and were immediately in danger of suffocation, their situation being all the more critical because the room was thick with smoke and gases. A score of their comrades rushed in and dug frantically till all of them were rescued and carried out, to be hurried away to the Receiving Hospital.
Chief Eley was hospitalized several weeks before returning to duty, although his injuries constantly bothered him. That spring he took a leave of absence and went to a Lake Elsinore resort to recuperate. He was there two months when he suffered a major relapse and was near death. Fire Commissioner A.F. Frankenstein and Chief Eley’s physician, Dr. Arthur D. Houghton raced to Riverside, borrowed an ambulance and a driver and with siren and red light, rushed Chief Eley 100 miles to Good Samaritan Hospital where he recovered and resumed work.
The day after the Brennan Hotel fire the Los Angeles Examiner editorialized in support of a proposed charter amendment creating a better pension system for firefighters and police: “Thousands saw the heroic men enter the inferno into which their duty called them. Shortly after … word went whispering through the watching throngs that they were lost and … pity stirred all hearts as their unconscious forms were being stumblingly brought forth by their no less heroic fellows. Every now and then some … firemen receive medals as public recognition of conspicuous acts of heroism. The recognition is little enough … The hero is soon forgotten by the many. Only his family knows what the performance of his duty has cost him; the aches and pains, the failing eyes, the strained vitals. Today the city is ringing with the news of the fire, its desperate character, the deadliness of the developed fumes, the bravery of the firemen; yet 30 days from now, who will remember those names, who will think of the men who, at the time, will be suffering in silence from the aftereffects of yesterday’s injuries?” The editorial concluded by imploring voters to approve the charter amendment. The charter amendment passed that spring and signed into ordinance September 16, 1913.
Submitted by Frank Borden