THE CITY THREATENED
It was impossible to get within two miles of the fire, and from that distance it appeared that explosions, probably of drugs, made the fire seem of larger proportions than it was. It appeared to have about burned itself out, and it was not believed it would spread to other blocks.
It was impossible to ascertain, even approximately, the number of persons who might have been marooned in this section and who died after being trapped by flood and fire.
The flames at night cast a red weird glow over the flood-stricken city that added to the fears of thousands of refugees and marooned persons, and led to apprehension that there might have been many of the water's prisoners in the burned buildings.
Fire started anew at nine o'clock at night and burned fiercely.
The men, women and children marooned in the Beckel Hotel were terror stricken when fire threatened the building for the second time at night. Since Tuesday morning two hundred and fifty persons had been in the place.
Crowded in the upper stories of tall office buildings and residences in Dayton, two miles each way from the center of the town, were hundreds of persons whom it was impossible to approach. Hundreds of fires which it was impossible to fight were burning. The rescue boats were unable to get farther from the shore than the throw line would permit. They could not live in the current.
At midnight residents of Dayton watching the course of the flames from across the wide stretch of flood waters believed the fire got its new start in the afternoon in the store of the Patterson Tool and Supply Company, on Third Street, just east of Jefferson, whence it ate its way west, apparently aided by escaping gas and exploding chemicals in two wholesale drug establishments.
Throughout the night fires lighted the sky and illuminated the rushing waters. Fifty thousand people were jammed in the upper floors of their homes, with no gas, no drinking water, no light, no heat, no food.