Spokane Christmas
Mail Is Destroyed
Santa's pack, containing 400 sacks of Christmas mail, was
scorched and badly damaged at 5:30 o'clock this morning when
fire broke out in a steel mail car on the Northern Pacific tracks
here, near the passanger depot.
Thousands of people along the Northern Pacific line between
Spokane and Tacoma will do without some of their Christmas
gifts, or will find them delivered late, with an official explanation
on the wrapper.
Part of the damaged mail was in insured parcels.
Most of the mail had its origin in the east and arrived here on
the Great Northern fast mail. It was sorted here and the local
mail along the N. P. route to the Coast was aboard.
"About 400 sacks of mail were in the car," said George Addle-
man, head of the railway mail service here. "Only part of the
contents was destroyed, but water from the fire hoses soaked it
down pretty well. Firemen had to pour in water to check the
flames.
"It will take several days to straighten it out. We shall have
to let the mail dry, otherwise addresses would be so smeared they
would not be decipherable. When dry enough to handle, we shall
re-wrap the parcels and on each will be an official explanation of
the reason for the delay in delivery.
"It is difficult to determine the cause of the fire. It may have
been due to spontaneous combustion. Frequently in Christmas
mails there are articles made of celluloid, which is highly inflammable when exposed to heat. Fire can easily occur if a sack containing an article of this kind gets against a steam pipe."