October is Fire Prevention Month in commemoration of the Great Chicago Fire that began on October 8, 1871, when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, according to legend, kicked over a lantern that started a fire in the straw strewn about the barn that quickly consumed the structure. The blaze spread to other buildings and houses and over the next couple of days the conflagration nearly razed the entire city of Chicago. Insurance losses were staggering, a few paid claims in full but many companies failed or paid only partial amounts.
Fire is unforgiving, reducing anything combustible to ashes, and what the flames didn’t touch, water and soot ruined. Prior to the Great Chicago Fire, insurance companies organized the Fire Insurance Patrol to reduce losses. Two or three men would go into a burning structure with tarpaulins, covering the contents to protect them for salvage and then posting a guard to prevent looting after a fire. While the extent of this inferno thwarted salvage efforts, the city’s fire Captain Bill Bullwinkle subsequently reorganized the Fire Insurance Patrol. In 1886, the Underwriter’s Association of Cincinnati, Ohio adopted Bullwinkle’s model and created the Underwriter’s Salvage Corps to protect a building’s contents during a fire from smoke and water damage and to secure the structure after a fire. A private company, the Salvage Corps, was authorized to work with the city fire department on an equal basis. Herman F. Newman, a city firefighter, who began a salvage operation in 1879, was named superintendent of the Corps. He later came to Indianapolis in 1900 and helped in organizing the city’s first salvage corps.
When local insurance companies declined to provide financial support, the Merchants’ Salvage Corps was formed by the Indianapolis Merchants’ Association and the Manufacturers’ Association with Newman as its superintendent. Operating out of a building at 109 E. South St., the corps maintained a two-horse wagon carrying six men and a driver with another wagon carrying tarpaulins. A typical blaze required the corps to use from fifteen to thirty covers to protect a structure’s contents from fire and water damage. After five years of saving property from loss, Newman closed the salvage corps because of the continuing lack of financial support from the insurance companies. The need for a salvage corps soon became apparent when a fire occurred on an upper floor of the Badger Furniture Co. building, 14-20 E. Washington St. At least half of the loss from water damage in this fire was preventable if tarps had been spread across the stock of furniture and bric-a-brac on the building’s lower floors. A similar situation occurred several years later when water, being poured on a fire at Kipp Bros., 37-41 S. Meridian St., came through the upper floors and flooded the store. A salvage corps could have protected $50,000 (2025: $1,757,418) worth of goods from considerable water damage.
After years of debate, the Indianapolis Salvage Corps was incorporated in August 1913 under the auspices of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Fire Insurance Bureau with expenses paid for by the fire insurance companies. Once established, the men of the salvage corps were trained as life savers first and then using waterproof covers to protect an owner’s belongings from fire, smoke, and water. When it became fully operational in July 1914, the Salvage Corps was housed in a building at 225 E. Pearl St., later moving to 422 E. New York St., and consisted of a superintendent, two squads of five “cover men” each, and two motorized wagons to carry the men and about 400 covers. In one of its first runs, the Salvage Corps was credited in saving the furniture and many antique pieces when fire consumed the third floor and roof of the home of Joseph Munchhof, 2046 N. New Jersey St. In warehouse fires, the Salvage Corps would remove as much of the building’s contents as it could and cover the rest with tarpaulins to reduce the water damage.
During the ‘20s, the work of the Salvage Corps together with fire prevention efforts by the Chamber of Commerce and improvements in fire protection reduced the per capita fire loss from $5.75 to $1.42. Fire insurance rates also saw a slight reduction for frame dwellings with shingle roofs in this same period, but the most significant rate change was for frame dwellings with approved fire-resistant roofs where rates were reduced by half. The chamber was an early advocate in the movement to eliminate wooden shingle roofs which accounted for many fires. The change to fire retardant roofing drastically reduced the number of roof fires and the need for the Salvage Corps to spread tarps.
Fires were often a daily occurrence in the downtown business district until frequent inspections and compliance by establishment owners with safety suggestions dramatically reduced fire hazards. Similar fire prevention education and adherence to the slogan, “Clean Property Seldom Burns,” along with the introduction of automatic sprinkler systems, greatly curbed blazes in the industrial and warehouse districts.
In the early 1930s, the Indianapolis Fire Department formed a salvage corps at Station 14, Kenwood Ave. and 30th St., covering a portion of the city’s northside not served by the Indianapolis Salvage Corps. Similar salvage corps were established at fire department stations in Irvington and Broad Ripple, expanding the area of protection.
The perfection of firefighting techniques, an emphasis on fire prevention, and fire-resistant building construction led the Indianapolis Fire Department, in October 1944, to assume the duties of the Indianapolis Salvage Corps because “fire losses have been reduced to the point where maintenance of the corps is no longer necessary.” With its successes, the Salvage Corps passed into a chapter of the city’s history.
