The great South Side fire of 1909 in Fort Worth was “uncontrollable fury”

The cause was a fleeting “boys will be boys” lark; the effect was permanent changes in the way Fort Worth prepares for disasters.

On April 3, 1909, two boys experimenting with matches started the great South Side fire. First a nearby barn went up in flames. The fire quickly jumped to another building. And another.

Within minutes, the fire, fed by wood-framed, wood-shingled houses and fanned by winds gusting to 40 mph, spread north toward downtown with what the Star-Telegram called “uncontrollable fury.”

All of the city’s fire companies were dispatched, as were companies from Dallas, who arrived by train. Fire companies from Weatherford and the city of North Fort Worth also helped Fort Worth.

The Fort Worth Panthers and Detroit Tigers even canceled their exhibition baseball game that day and helped fight the fire.

But the Fort Worth Fire Department, still using horse-drawn equipment, was not prepared for such a conflagration. “Helpless,” the Star-Telegram said in its first report. Fire melted the copper wires of the fire department’s alarm telegraph. Fire melted fire hoses. Streetcar lines lost electricity for about three hours.

After three hours the voracious fire simply ran out of fuel and burned itself out. Much of the South Side was reduced to a black forest of charred utility poles and chimneys.

Among the buildings destroyed were 100 residences and three churches (Broadway Baptist, Broadway Presbyterian and Swedish Methodist Episcopal).

Also burned was the Protestant Sanitarium at South Main and Vickery Boulevard.

The sprawling Texas & Pacific railroad reservation along Vickery Boulevard acted as a fire break, keeping the fire from reaching downtown. But T&P was the biggest monetary loser of the fire. Some of its workshops, freight cars, its roundhouse, and 35 locomotives inside the roundhouse were burned. Coal in the train yard burned, adding to the black smoke filling the sky.

The cost of the fire, estimated at $2 million in 1909, would be $56 million today.

While Fort Worth counted its losses, it could also count its blessings: The human toll of the fire could have been far worse. Just as Al Hayne had been the only fatality of the Texas Spring Palace fire of 1890, J. J. Newlon of Krum was the only fatality of the great South Side fire of 1909. Newlon, visiting friends on West Daggett Street, died as he was helping save valuables from the fire.

The city began relief and reconstruction immediately.

Police and two local militia units — Fort Worth Fencibles and Bovinian Rangers — patrolled the burn zone. By April 5, 34 people had been arrested.

The wind that spread the fire would prove true the “ill wind” proverb: Because of the fire, Fort Worth made changes.

The fire department had pumped so much water onto the fire that the city water supply had been compromised. Partly in response, in 1913 the city would build Lake Worth as a reservoir to provide more water for such emergencies.

The fire department bought hoses that would not melt in intense heat. It bought motorized vehicles and built more neighborhood fire stations.

The city paved more streets and encouraged people to build brick “fireproof” homes instead of wooden houses like those that had burned so easily in the great South Side fire of 1909.

Mike Nichols blogs about Fort Worth history at www.hometownbyhandlebar.com.