Since 1821, when Jean Lafitte sailed away from a burning Campeche, the history of Galveston has often been wreathed in smoke. Over the next century, one inferno breached the walls of Moro Castle, while another reduced forty-two blocks of the residential district to ash. Recognizing the importance of protecting the city, concerted efforts were made to establish a paid fire department, create a city waterworks and regulate construction standards.

Yet, even with all the forethought and planning, rogue fires continued to consume architectural gems like Nicholas Clayton's Electric Pavilion. James F. Anderson’s new book, “Galveston Burning,” explores the lessons that Galveston has learned from its fiery past in order to safeguard its future.

“Back when I was doing ghost tours with Dash (Beardsley), he and I had a rather heated discussion over what the name of a particular fire was. It was the 1885 Fire,” Anderson said. During the discussion they realized that this particular fire is known by several different names. “In researching the topic after that discussion, I found a plethora of articles about the topic, and that’s kind of how this project began.”

The book includes chapters about the history of Galveston and its fire department, historic structures lost or damaged by fire, and stories about fires in the commercial, residential, wharf, and warehouse districts.

When asked why he thinks there were so many fires in Galveston’s history Anderson responded, “Most of the construction in Galveston was wood, and so close together. They also used a lot of flammable materials, burning wood, coal, and kerosene and that could catch the buildings on fire pretty quickly. Even though the buildings were so close to the bay, a lot of the buildings were getting water out of little stagnant ponds to use for fires. They did require that almost every room in the buildings had their own bucket of water, so if anything happened, they could be used for a bucket brigade.”

 

A bucket brigade was a method of utilizing a human chain to pass containers of water from one person to the next, to transport water to extinguish fires. It was an important approach to firefighting in the era before hand-pumped fire engines.

“The first fire I mention in the book is Jean Laffite’s, because he burned the town in 1820. But as far as Galveston, the earliest fire I was able to find happened in a hotel that was built in the brig of a grounded ship in about the 1850s.”

Anderson included stories of some famous fires, even though extensive details were not available, like the Ursuline Convent blaze, due to their importance to local history.

“The most recent fire discussed in the book was at my friend Dale Carter’s house within the last five years. They don’t really know if it was due to arson or carelessness.”

Anderson does touch on the subject of arson in his project, including the fire that destroyed the Darragh House. “There’s a possibility that others were arson, too, including the fire at the Garten Verein. Back in the 1980s, it caught fire at a time when a man was arrested for setting other fires in the area.”

“I don’t cover the 1860s in depth, because I learned that when you enter the word ‘fire’ into the search engine with that time period, you come back with over a million hits, and it’s hard to narrow it down. I did find that there were two men in the 1860s who were accused then tried that actually worked with the volunteer fire departments. They were going around setting fires their companies could respond to because they were getting rewarded every time they put a fire out.” Those particular cases aren’t in his current book, but he finds them fascinating.

“I used newspapers, old books, and Google to do my research.” He also found an old firefighters’ magazine that listed fires in Galveston that had not been mentioned in the local newspapers. He also credits another researcher’s generosity by adding, “There’s a gentleman by the name of Austin Smith who is accumulating early photos and documents from the fire department of Galveston. He shared his entire Google drive of images.”

 

When asked what the most surprising thing about working on this book project has been, Anderson replied, “the number of fires that have hit the island. I never imagined so many could have occurred here, and I didn’t even cover them all. There was one year that there were over 400 cotton bale fires,” he elaborated. “Mostly those were in the wharf area. A passing train would pass the stacks of cotton and a spark from the engine would catch one on fire which would spread to others.”

“I tried to keep it on the lighter side when I was researching, and not to go into detail about many deaths in the fires. I did mention as many firefighters as I could, and I tried to keep my book focus on the property and most higher price damage, so that’s what most of the stories are about. “

A photo at the front of the book is of a memorial that stands in front of a Galveston fire station, listing the names of firefighters lost in the line of duty.

Surprisingly, his research did uncover a few light hearted stories. “I found an article from 1978 about the 1885 Fire that interviewed an elderly man who remembered the fire, and who was about eight years old at the time. He remembered hearing the alarm go off when he was in bed, and he could tell where the fire was.”

The boy heard fire alarms when he was in bed one night, and even though it was around midnight, the boy got out of bed, told his parents he was going to ride his bike to see the fire and they allowed him to go. “I thought it was funny because in this day and age you won’t let a child do something like that,” he laughed. “That was one of my favorite stories.”

“The last book I could find that had published anything about local fires was a souvenir book from 1926, so I knew the subject needed updating. I think one of the most intriguing things I discovered while doing the book was that, even though the fire department was entirely volunteer operated up until 1885, we still had a pretty good fire department. It was one of the earliest in the state, founded in 1843.”

Though Anderson describes some of the island’s most famous fires in the book, he admitted it would be impossible to cover them all in one volume. “There were so many other stories I wanted to share, but I just ran out of space.”

“Galveston Burning” is $23.99 and available at the Galveston Bookshop, 317 23rd Street, or on Amazon.com.