On February 19, 1927 the Westwood High School was destroyed by fire. Such events are news worthy. In this particular instance how the fire was contained was quite unusual.

It was one o’clock in the morning when the fire alarm was turned on. When the firefighters arrived they found the high school fully engulfed in flames. There was little they could do, as it was impossible to save it. They focused their efforts not only to contain it but also to keep it from spreading to the Grammar school located next door. The heat was so intense that it was impossible to enter the building to salvage its contents. Because of the extreme heat the houses across the street began to smolder as if they were going to spontaneously combust. An unusual firefighting technique was developed for this particular instant, and credit was given to Fletcher Walker for this ingenious idea. With the majority of the town gathered to watch the fire, Fletcher recruited citizens to start throwing snowballs at the endangered houses to prevent them from catching fire. It worked!

As Ted Walker recalled, “Fletcher assembled a large number of bystanders into a snow-ball brigade. This force bombarded the nearby houses with snowballs and succeeded in keeping the roofs and sides of the houses sufficiently damp so that the houses were saved. Shingles and sidings were afire many times, but in each case the blaze yielded to the snow-ball treatment.”

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