IDAHO: Law Observance

Prime requisite of a fireman is the ability to think fast in an emergency. Last week, the firemen of Boise, Idaho did so. Roused a few minutes after 3 a.m. by a newsboy who had noticed a pile of straw burning in a corral, firemen raced to the scene, found flames licking at a barn belonging to the Myron Jacobs Riding Academy, where swank Boiseans stable their horses. The Riding Academy is 25 ft. outside Boise’s city limits. A city ordinance forbids the fire department to fight fires outside Boise, and firemen injured doing so get no compensation. Boise’s firemen last week promptly decided to take no chances. Instead of trying to put the little fire out, they sat down to watch it.

Exact boundary of Boise is the centre of Reserve Street. From engines and a pump wagon, parked on the city’s side of the street, the firemen called out advice to scores of non-professional fire fighters who were doing their best to fight the growing conflagration on the other side. Only animals in the Jacobs barns were seven saddle horses, valued at from $1,000 to $3,000 each, including a five-gaited, Kentucky-bred stallion named Lady’s Man which was a favorite mount of Senator William E. Borah. Bystanders appealed for axes to help get the horses out. The firemen, aware that insurance on their equipment was void if the equipment was damaged outside Boise, quick-wittedly refused. While the horses burned to death in screeching agony, Boise’s firemen played their hose on a telegraph pole across the street from the fire, to protect it from the flames.

When the fire burned out, five barns had burned to the ground. Damages were about $40,000. Said Boise’s Mayor J. L. Edlefsen: “I fail to see … what the department could have done.” Said Fire Chief W. E. Foster: “It was as hard for our firemen as anyone else to watch those animals burn to death.”