Hotel Fire, Caused by Disinfecting Fluid, Takes Six Lives

Hotel Fire, Caused by Disinfecting Fluid, Takes Six Lives

Men Suffocated in Blaze Which Leaped Up Stairway Cutting Off Escape—Coroner’s Jury Fixes Blame—Burnings of the Week

THE ignition of inflammable disinfecting fluid as it was being carried up a stairway of the Mills Hotel, 265 Halsey Street, Newark, N. J., caused a fire which resulted in the death of six men. The fire occurred at 9:30 o’clock on May 27, while a porter was taking the can containing the fluid up a stairway leading from the entrance to the hotel to the second floor. The fluid was in a five-gallon steel drum. The flaming liquid was spilled on stairs and wooden partitions and the blaze apparently ate its way upward instantaneously, mushrooming through the various floors of the hotel with great rapidity. The fire was discovered by a man who was passing the hotel at 9:25 o’clock and who heard the noise of someone falling down the stairs. Investigating he found the porter attempting to extinguish the fire in the drum from which the fluid was pouring, while the stairs and partitions had already became ignited by the blaze. He at once notified the traffic officer at William and Halsey Streets and the first alarm was sent in at 9:35. As soon as Chief Paul J. Moore, who was then in charge of the Newark fire department, arrived a second alarm was sent in at 9:39 and a third at 9:42. About 130 firemen responded with eleven engine and three hook and ladder companies. There were about twenty 6-inch double and high pressure hydrants within two blocks of the fire and six high pressure and about twenty engine streams were thrown in fighting it. Some 232 lengths of 2 1/2-inch hose were laid and besides which four deck nozzles, one water tower and one extension ladder with deluge set attached, were used by the department;