It was April 21, 1922 when a worn drag chain meant to dissipate static electricity didn’t work and a static spark set off a gasoline tanker and trailer that was refueling Downey’s main gas station at Downey Avenue and New Street.
Nine were killed and 20 received disfiguring burns in the desperate fight to control the flames that followed.
By the end of the following year the Downey Fire Protection District had been formed, with a new engine and professional firefighters to replace the volunteer brigade that had previously served the community.
In all, 2,400 gallons of gas burned in that 1922 deluge, 1,770 of it in the truck and the rest in the tanks of the razed gas station that belonged to Newbold and Speaker.
One survivor of the blaze, attorney Haygood Ardis, told of people rushing to fight the spreading blaze while others stood on nearby rooftops and watched.
The small volunteer fire department headed by shoe store owner Carl Krueger was equipped with a 42-gallon hand-drawn chemical tank, funded through public contributions. It was no match for the inferno.
Ardis was quoted later. "I was carrying a tubful of water with Freddie Robinson when suddenly the truck blew up. The blast showered us with burning gasoline and set off the big tank trailer that was hitched onto the rear of the truck."
Ardis said many who ran from the first blast were caught by the flames from the exploding trailer. He said he ran nearly to Fifth Street before collapsing. He still had enough sense to roll, putting out his burning clothing.
His ear was nearly burned off, his hands badly burned and he was temporarily blinded, but he said he lived because he had held his breath and not breathed the flames.
Others were not so lucky.
Among the dead were Walter Pulley, brother of druggist Leamon Pulley; Fred Bigby; Clyde Weirbach; Guy Rieman; Harry Johnson, Jr.; and Edward Vandegrift.
The many injured included Frank Boheim (who was so badly hurt he lived just a few months); Lester Witherspoon; Fred Thompson and his son, Roy; James Stamps; Lawrence Manning; Raymond Strine; Frank Zamboni; George Clark; Jerome McGurn; L.E. Price and W.E. Harry.
There was no hospital in Downey at that time. Community Hospital was founded two years later just two blocks from where the fire took place.
Some of the most severely injured were taken to Los Angeles and some went to Artesia Hospital. For the rest, they were patched up at the old Downey Hotel whose second floor became an emergency ward.
Downey Avenue (then known as Crawford Street) was barricaded on both sides of the hotel to keep traffic noise down and not disturb the injured.
The whole town went into mourning, then decided to pay for a fulltime fire department.
Today, the statue of the Virgin outside the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church stands about where the blaze took place.
Those who lived through the fire will never forget it.
(The recent controversy over an effort to disband the Downey Fire Department brought this "Time traveler" column which appeared previously in the pages of The Downey Eagle to mind. Thus, we reprint it.)