Fire!

 In the March 29, 1923 issue of The Sheldon Progress a front page article reported that the “Public School Building and All Contents Totally Destroyed When Blaze Started at Six P.M. Friday.”  

The explosion of an alcohol lamp in a fumigator placed in the domestic science room started a blaze at six o’clock last Friday evening that totally destroyed the Sheldon Public School building together with all its contents, entailing a loss of over $50,000.

The school building was being fumigated over the weekend holiday. C. H. Bickford, the janitor, was on the second floor lighting the last of the fumigators, when there was a sudden and terrific explosion in the basement.

Fighting his way through the fumes and dense smoke, he reached the domestic room in the basement to find it enveloped in flames and the fire shooting from the door into the furnace room. He rushed to the first floor and turned in a fire alarm by ringing the school bell, and then tried again to enter the basement thru the outside celler way on the southside of the building. Breaking open this door, he was met by a cloud of dense smoke, but managed to stay in the furnace room to unwind a short piece of hose and direct a stream of water on the fire for a few seconds when he was driven out by clouds of dense smoke that surged out of the passageway.

The wooden partitions in the basement caught fire almost immediately and the flames were sucked up thru the ventilating system firing the building from bottom to top. The fire broke thru the first floor within a few minutes after the explosion.

The firemen soon had a line of hose laid and when they attempted to connect with the hydrant near the Louis Howell corner found this to be frozen, and they had to run a line over three blocks from the butchershop corner. When they got a stream of water this entire basement was in a blaze and their best efforts were futile to check it….

The building was a nine-room structure entirely of brick. The main part of the building was erected more than twenty years ago and an addition built on twelve years ago….

There was no loss of school time…The school building will be rebuilt during the coming summer. The board have been in session almost continuously since the fire, meeting with architects … Estimates so far call for an expenditure for another building in excess of $40,000…The insurance money will not replace the building and before anything definite can be done, a special election must be held to vote bonds….