Celebrating Juneteenth Going Down to Come Up

At CRT, we know how crucial time is to first responders. We also understand that fire knows no race or creed.

However, as we celebrate Juneteenth, we take a particular look at African Americans and their role in firefighting.In fact our founder, and executive director Marc Brooks, is African American.

In our past celebration of Juneteenth,we focused on Patrick Raymond, first American fire chief, appointed in 1871 in Cambridge MA.

This time we focus on an innovative device that has saved countless lives and saved first responders critical time: the fire pole.

You may laugh and think of fire poles as a cliche along with walrus mustaches and Dalmatians, but this is a true time saver.

Here’s the story. In 1872 Chicago, the first paid African American firehouse was established in Chicago— not the first in the country but the first in the Windy City.

typically in those days the first floor was devoted to horses — yep those were the days—the second to firemen to sleep and eat, and the third for hay.

Typically the horses were drawn to the aromas upstairs, which led to the installation of spiral staircases which worked but up to a point, as many times horses were stuck in the staircases, delaying time and sometimes a response at all.

This changed with Chicago’s fire captain David Kenyon,captain of Chicago’s Firehouse 21.

He was working in the hayloft on the the third floor when an alarm sounded. The man he was working with instinctively grabbed a large pole used for transporting the hay and slid down, easily beating the men coming slowly down the spiral stairs.

Kenyon saw the possibilities and installed a fire pole, first made of Ponderosa Pine and waxed. He had to make headway both inside and outside: his superiors thought the idea so crazy that he offered to pay for it himself, then when it was installed other fire companies ridiculed it, no doubt with a racist component involved.

They changed their tune, however, when they saw that Company 21 was first on the scene, sometimes up to ten minutes before other brigades.

The idea caught on throughout Chicago and expanded beyond: Boston developed the brass pole, the one that is more than a feature we may know from Emergency! But a true life and time saver.

A subsequent benefit is kids on school trips to fire stations transfixed by the poles: I know I was. An early secondary form of recruitment 🙂

So this Juneteenth let’s celebrate David Kenyon, innovation and the overcoming of prejudice and sticking to ‘old ways.’

At CRT we embody this, from our founder to our multi racial volunteers and staff.

As we noted before, fire knows no boundaries, and we are proud to say, we don’t either.