What did the “hooks” look like on the original hook and ladder trucks? Master historian Matt Lee included this picture in his 1997 book “A Pictorial History of the Fire Engine – Volume I.”[1]

It’s one of the best pictures and explanations that I’ve come across. Note that there are two of them, a curved hook and a flat hook. That’s a Seagrave factory photo, undated. Probably 1890s? Horse-drawn ladder truck with “T. F. D.” on the side.

He described the hooks as such:

“The curved hook is for pulling down buildings or portions of buildings in order to create a fire break. In the early days of wood buildings and row housing, the only way to effect a fire break was to tear down a dwelling or out building. The curved hook had ten feet of chain attached to it. At the end of the chain was a length of stout rope. The hook had a hollow handle so that a pike pole could be used to position the hook and chain on a burning structure. The end of the rope was attached to a team of strong horses and the building was pulled apart to facilitate a fire break.”

“The flat hook, with a pulley in its base, was for hoisting items over a roof or wall.”

Collapsing buildings to create fire breaks was a tried-and-true technique of early firefighting. Yours Truly wrote this about Raleigh’s volunteer Hook and Ladder Company, in an earlier retrospective:

“As most of the home of the time were constructed of wood, flames could easily jump between buildings. One method of preventing fires from spreading involved the using a “hook.” This large grab hook was attached to about fifty feet of chain and another hundred or more feet of rope. Members would throw the hook through a window and, with all hands helping, they would pull down the house. This was rarely done, however, with the property owner aware. Their fire company even had a slogan about this displayed on a big sign attached to their truck. It read “Say the word and down comes your house!”[2]

Explosives were also to blow up buildings and create breaks in the path of a spreading conflagration. Local examples abound.

In 1803, the City of Raleigh Commissioners were granted “full power to do what they may deem necessary to stop the progress of the calamity, even to the causing of adjoining buildings to be taken down or blown up, without being answerable for any damage to the owner or owners of property so destroyed.”

This method was used to help control the first major fire on record, that destroyed 51 buildings in the first two blocks of Fayetteville Street on June 11, 1816. “In [the fire’s] course northwardly, it crossed a street 66 feet wide; and was arrested finally by blowing up Mr. Stuart’s kitchen and by throwing water continually on his dwelling house, under cover of some trees” wrote the Raleigh Register account.

And 112 years later, during the great fire of New Bern in 1922, nearly 100 homes were dynamited, as well as six houses along Queen Street that were “pulled down by a large cable” attached to a steam locomotive, was was recounted by Dr. Joseph Patterson in a historical presentation in 1992, for the Memories of New Bern Committee. Read that transcript at newbern.cpclib.org/research/memories/pdf/Fire.pdf

Readers, what historical examples of fire hook or fire break blasting can you share?

[1] Mr. Lee has written three volumes of his pictorial histories. They were self-published in 1997 (Volume I), 1999 (Volume II), and 2005 (Volume III). They are easily the best books on fire apparatus history, totaling some 1200 pages of crisply reproduced photographs and expert explanations and presentations of the histories.

[2] From “Raleigh Fire Department 1880-1899”, created in 2009. Read that document at www.legeros.com/ralwake/raleigh/history/writing/1880-1899.pdf

He was the first man up in the morning, and the last one to bed at night. Three times a week the horses were taken out at 5 a.m. for exercise, unless they had run the night before. This meant the driver got up at 4 a.m. There were stalls to clean and horses to groom and harness to polish. This all had to be finished by 10 a.m. Otherwise 6 a.m. was the usual rising hour for all firemen. Upon rising, the driver curried and brushed his horses, while another scrubbed down the stalls with boiling water, and a third man took care of the harness. Still others took care of the specific feeding routine.

Each fireman who had the care of a horse went back to do his final chore for the day before retiring. He cleaned the stall floor, and bedded it with straw or peat moss. He filled the wire basket with hay, and put water in the basin on the left wall. Also, at 10 a.m., every morning there was uniform inspection, and examination of quarters, horses, and apparatus. During these inspections the men stood at attention, while the captain walked about. If all was satisfactory, the men were saluted and were released to go at will to quarters.

They looked forward to the leisure time after inspection. Unless they were called, their time was their own, to do as they wished. Some slept, others read, and almost always there was some kind of card game in progress.

They worked twenty-four hours a day under the old system, with only one day off each month. The hours were long and tedious. The driver had the day watch from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., the lieutenant from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Then the night watch was given over to the regular firemen on four-hour shifts.

The main floor was dark save for a small lamp on the watch desk and the lanterns that hung, one on each side of the hose wagon, steam engine, ladder truck and chief’s carriage. The signal gongs and wall telephone that linked the firehouse to headquarters and to every corner and alley in the city, and the automatic switching, levers, and push buttons that operated the various alarms, release devices and house lights in the station, were all in the compact space against the wall toward the front of the room.

There sat the man on watch, at a tilt-top desk on which the journal lay opened and ready to take the record of the next alarm. He sat alone at the desk. The house rules kept all the other firemen upstairs or out in the yard, except when there was an alarm or fire, or when they had some station duty to perform.

Turned down boots stood waiting in pair about the floor, rubber coats, with insides up so the sleeve holes could be found in a hurry, hung conveniently over knobby parts of the apparatus. Between the hose wagon and the ladder truck was the chief’s black carriage, small, delicate. Over the dashboard hung the chief’s white coat and while helmet and the driver’s cap and jacket.

At unannounced times, the assistant chief made rounds of the house to look over the horses. He would pull a white silk handkerchief from his pocket, and rub it over the back, neck, and sides of the horses. Any slight soil on the silk was serious; a real offense. A complaint about the horse of the horses meant a fine of at least ten days’ pay. Cleanliness was important, but much attention was also paid to the feet of the animals. Without good, healthy feet a horse was useless. Shoes were changed approximately every four weeks.

A weekly inspection was held, in the old horse-drawn apparatus days, to determine how quickly horses could be harnessed to the engines. The battalion chief of the district stood with a stop watch in his hand and checked the time. A firehouse’s reputation was only as good as its horses and men.

If it took more than twelve seconds for the men to harness up and be at the curb line of the street, it was considered poor time. One might say here that they rolled out of quarters quicker with the horses than they do with the motor apparatus today. But today, of course, the time is made up on the road.

A competitive, or speed test was held on April 22, 1893, to ascertain the exact time in which one man could dress, harness the horses and have the engine in the street after the gong sounded. At this test, Lemuel Rudolph of No. 7 Engine, carried off the prize […] by making a hitch in 25 ½ seconds.

Selected excerpts from The Firehorses of San Francisco by Natlee Kenoyer. Published 1970 by Westernlore Press, Los Angeles, 94 pages. 

Photo – Engine No. 11, San Francisco Fire Department. A call out at night, April 1914. Courtesy San Francisco Fire Museum.