“The Father of Florence” – Florence Times, August 1, 1890
Florence Fire Department was founded on April 25, 1828 as a volunteer fire company made up of every male in Florence between the ages of 18 and 50. It decreed that each house must have its own ladder and its own leather bucket with a capacity of two gallons to be used only for fire-fighting.
With this equipment the men of Florence put out fires by forming a double line to pass buckets of water back and forth between the burning building and the nearest well or cistern.
The act also took steps to prevent fires by forbidding the keeping of more than 25 pounds of gun powder within 100 feet of a house and by forbidding the building of stables with hay, fodder, or hemp within the limits of the business district. Perhaps the most valuable clause in the act was fining anyone who turns in a false alarm ten dollars (equivalent to about $220 today) during the day and twenty dollars (about $435 today) at night.
By 1902, Florence’s fire equipment consisted of a hand-drawn two-wheel cart carrying a hose and a hook and ladder wagon pulled by horses rented at Jesse Pattons’ livery stable, located where the Negley Hotel was.
The town’s water system had been installed in 1890. The fire alarm system, however, was the same as it had been in 1828. When a fire broke out, someone would have to shoot a gun or run into town to announce the fire.
In 1915, the Fire Chief, Donald White, purchased its first motor vehicle, a type 20 American LaFrance (pictured in the above April 1915 photo). A phone was also installed in the fire station to be used for social calls as well as announcing fires.
In 1918 Gamewell Fire Alarm Company installed a modern five-circuit automatic repeater and positive non-interfering system of Fire Alarm boxes and a six-circuit Fire Alarm switch board. This equipment would be automatic even if all the city current were turned off.
