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Halifax Disaster Record Office
Archibald MacMechan, F.R.S.C.
Halifax, N.S.
Jan. 30, 1918

Journal

Fire Chief Inspects Scene of Yesterday's Great Alarm; Finds Tar Pot Still There
Civic Authorities Have Reply From Sir Robert Borden to Their Protest About Picton Affair - Two Halifax Stevedores Who Put Out Yesterday's Fire at Ocean Terminals - The Official Correspondence - Sentries Reported to Have Decamped at First Alarm.

Fire Chief Churchill and Controller Hines, the Fire Department Controller are keeping close tabs on sheds 23 and 24, Halifax Ocean Terminals, in the interest of the public, and the Chief made inspections yesterday afternoon and this morning He was surprised to find this morning again a tar pot with fire underneath it about twelve feet from shed 23 and he lost no time in calling attention to it.
The two Halifax men who braved all the danger, put out the fire and relieved the public anxiety were Thomas Lannon, of 208 Gottingen street, hatch foreman of the Pickford and Black stevedoring employ, and Wm. Earle, 130 Creighton Street, of the C.P.R. overseas service. When pretty nearly everybody else had left the shed these two men, heedless of danger - and the possibility of danger was not unknown to them - grabbed the 40-gallon extinguisher and played the contents on the blaze until it was subdued.
Samuel Jewers, one of the C.P.R. overseas stevedores, the man whose burned coat was in the fire, was scorched about the forehead. So far as can be learned there was a light explosion before the fire and it was through that that he was burned.
How Fire Started
The Fire Department authorities are satisfied that the origin of the fire was due to grains of cordite and phorphorus on the floor, causing a fume from which the lamb's wool on Jewer's coat caught and communicated to the excelsior in the box nearby.
It is stated that prcatically everybody, experts and all, excepting the two heroic men above names left the building in quick time.
It is also reported that the sentries on duty beat a hasty retreat.
The naval authorities said yesterday, however that it was one of the munitions inspectors who put out the blaze.
Mayor Martin this morning received a telegram from Premier Borden notifying him that the protest wired by His Worship yesterday had been referred to the minister in charge of the Naval Department.
The fact that while the alarm was sounding for yesterday forenoon for the fire at the south end terminals the City Clerk had in his hand and was presenting to the Board of Control in session at the City Hall a report from Fire Chief Churchill on fire prevention and precaution conditions at the new terminals and copies of correspondence between the Mayor and the local naval and military authorities was so striking by coincident as to be subject to a lot of comment during the day. After the Board meeting the City Clerk, at