Chapter VII: Day Dawns Upon the Ruins

As the sky grew light and the morning mist cleared away, it disclosed a vast expanse of smoking ruins. The night had passed, and what a night! filled with vivid, awful memories of the dead and injured, the homeless and destitute. The great blackened tract over which the fire had swept, which only the day before had been covered with dwellings, stores, and public buildings, was deserted, save for the soldiers, and here and there little groups of firemen, tired and worn out, but still working. As it grew lighter more people appeared. On the playground to the west soldiers were pitching tents for the homeless. As far as one could see lay nothing but a barren waste, with here and there the ragged walls of a church or school standing out against the sky, like the ruins of some old castle.

On the sides of Bellingham Hill, with the exception of the walls of the Highland School, nothing remained. Far off in the distance towards the west stood the ruins of the big Frank B. Fay School, named for Chelsea’s war mayor.

Broadway had been partly cleared during the night and was passable. The other streets, however, were piled with debris. The telephone, electric light, and street railway wires were in a tangled mass all over the city. In spite of this, by noon the telephone people had six lines operating for official business. A line of hose had been kept playing on the vaults of the County Savings Bank all night, and about ten o’clock they were opened. A great cloud of smoke poured out, but the contents were intact, giving confidence to the other bank officials that their securities were safe, which later proved true. To the southeast the huge oil tanks still belched forth clouds of smoke and flame, showing that here the fight was not yet over.

The granite curbs that edged the streets were crumbled into little piles of sand and gravel, and in the entire area there was not enough inflammable material to kindle a kitchen fire. So intense and searching had been the heat that the telegraph poles in places were burned two feet into the ground. Nowhere were there any ashes; they had all gone with the gale. It was the most complete sweep that could be imagined; hardly a brick wall stood, save those of public buildings. The sight was like nothing so much as the skeleton of Pompeii, with the great smoke clouds of the oil tanks to represent Vesuvius in eruption. The cellars were often filled with glowing coals, with here and there a darting flame and drifts of black smoke.

The horror of the devastation thrilled the tingling nerves, and it all seemed like a fearful dream until a sharp, “Halt! Who’s there?” from a guard, brought back the reality of the thing.

With the dawn the people of Chelsea got their first glimpse of the burnt area, and began to realize what the fire demon had accomplished. The work of over one hundred years had been destroyed in a few hours. In every direction were the skeletons of what had been beautiful shade trees that it had taken God fifty years to grow, and which “Hell’s breath” had withered and killed in a few minutes.

With the daylight people took courage; there was no weeping, and the excited crowds of the day before were no more. Men who had lost everything smiled and extended sympathy to others. The one thing that impressed the observer was the matter-of-fact way in which all took their losses. They kept their troubles to themselves and got to work helping others.