NFPA Journal - Spring 2021 - 80

UNSTOPPABLE

BALTIMORE'S 1904 CONFLAGRATION
By Caitlin Walker
n the morning of February 7, 1904,
a fire started in the basement of the
John E. Hurst and Co. building in
Baltimore, Maryland. The building's
automatic fire alarm system activated, and the fire department, located two blocks
away, responded immediately.
Firefighters encountered an aggressive fire that
quickly spread up an elevator shaft and caused
an explosion that blew out most of the building's
windows. By then, every floor was engulfed; firefighters struggled to control the blaze as strong
winds carried the fire to neighboring buildings.
An NFPA report described it as " a horizontal fire
[in] its attack and progress in each building. "
Overwhelmed firefighters requested assistance
from nearby communities, which sent apparatus
and personnel on railway cars. Neighboring cities

FIRE INCIDENTS AND
OTHER NOTABLE EVENTS
FROM SAFETY HISTORY

provided 1700 firefighters,
57 steam engines, nine hose
and ladder trucks, two hose
companies, a fire boat, and a
police boat, according to an
article in Firemen.
But assisting fire departments were unable to
connect their hoses to the
Baltimore hydrants because
the couplings were incompatible. Crews drew water
from the harbor; others
created makeshift connections to hydrants using
barrels and horse troughs
as reservoirs. City officials
authorized the demolition of
buildings in an attempt to
stop the conflagration, but
the dynamite did not fully
destroy the buildings; the fire continued, burning unchecked through
the night and into the next day until its progress was blocked by a
canal, where it was extinguished by 36 companies of firefighters.
No lives were lost during the conflagration, but the damage was
immense. The fire burned for more than 30 hours, destroying 2,500
buildings over 80 city blocks. NFPA Applied Research lists the Baltimore Conflagration in the top 25 largest fire losses in the United
States, with $50 million in losses. The fire illuminated the need for
improvements to building construction and design and revealed the
consequences of incompatible fire hose connections.
Later that year, the NFPA Committee on Fire-Resistive Construction
issued a report detailing the construction, exposures, occupancy, and
damage of the 27 fire-resistive buildings in the Baltimore Conflagration.
According to Annex B in NFPA 163, Standard for Fire Hose Connections,
NFPA then appointed the Committee on Standard Thread for Fire Hose
Couplings to develop general screw thread specifications in 1905. Over
the next 17 years, the committee worked to establish those specifications as a national standard. The standard was approved and adopted
by 20 organizations and was designated as an American Standard by
the American Standards Association (ASA) in 1925.
THE NFPA LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE holds a rich collection of books, reports, and photographs
that document important moments in fire history. To provide better electronic access for researchers and to preserve our unique archival holdings, work has begun to digitize the files of the Fire
Record Department, the original NFPA department responsible for collecting and analyzing information and compiling statistics about key fires and other events. The incidents featured in " Looking
Back " are drawn from this collection and will eventually be part of NFPA's online archive. For information, visit nfpa.org/library.

NFPA RESEARCH LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES

Looking Back

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NFPA Journal - Spring 2021

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