(4)
To rescue his money, which he hoped would raise him from the rank of workman to that of merchant, Woo Wing Lee, Chinese laundryman, 3031 Nicollet Avenue, ran back into his burning laundry today and was so badly burned that physicians say he cannot live.
Fire Stories. After the lead has been completed, the main part of the story remains to be written. The structure of the body of the story offers no particular difficulties in arrangement as the incidents usually follow each other in the order of time. In the account of a fire, it is usual, after the lead, to give the facts concerning the discovery of the fire, the sounding of the alarm, the arrival of the fire department, the progress of the fire, and the different incidents, with little or no variation from chronological order.
How a fire story is arranged is shown in the following example:
By sliding down a swaying extension ladder through fire and smoke, with an unconscious woman in his arms, Fireman Daniel Walter rescued her from death in a fire that early this morning swept through a five-story apartment house at 122 West Thirty-ninth Street, and caused a loss of $15,000. Mrs. Mary Owen, the woman saved, is in a serious condition as a result of inhaling smoke, but at the Harlem Hospital it was said that she would probably recover.
When the firemen on Truck 30 reached the burning building, they saw Mrs. Owen leaning out of a front window on the fifth floor, screaming for help and apparently preparing to jump to the street.
“Don’t jump,” shouted the firemen. “We’ll be up there in a minute.”
She stood motionless in the window with the smoke pouring out around her when the big eighty-foot extension ladder began to rise slowly in response to vigorous cranking. While the ladder was swaying like a pendulum as it ascended, Fireman Walter and Driver Frank Lawson began to climb up.
“Hold on just a second longer,” shouted Lawson as he saw that Mrs. Owen was again leaning forward as if about to jump.
When he reached the top of the ladder a moment later, Mrs. Owen swayed and fell back into the room. At the same instant flames burst out of the windows on the third floor and swept through the ladder.