irefighters slide down a firehouse pole so they can get to a fire fast. It's hard to imagine a time when fire stations didn't have poles. But the first firehouse pole wasn't mounted until 1878. And at the time, many firefighters thought the idea was crazy.
Then they realized something: The all-Black fire company using the pole was often first to arrive at the scene of a blaze.
Captain David Kenyon of Chicago's Company 21 invented the firehouse pole. Before then, firefighters had to find other ways to rush down from the second floor. Some dashed down spiral staircases that went around in circles. These were designed to keep firehouse horses from wandering upstairs. Others slid down tubes that looked like playground slides. Neither method worked well. The slides were slow. And the staircases were awkward.
Then one day, the alarm rang at Company 21. Kenyon and another firefighter were stacking hay on the third-floor loft at the time. The other firefighter grabbed a long wooden pole. He used it to slide to the first floor. He easily beat Kenyon, who ran down the spiral staircase.
As Kenyon joined the other firefighter, he thought: Why not put a permanent pole in the firehouse?
So, he did.
When people heard about Kenyon's idea, some thought it was nutty. But Company 21 proved the pole's usefulness. The station's horse-and-buggy often beat other stations to fires, especially at night. That's when the firefighters were often roused from their second-floor beds.
Back then, there was a sense of competition between fire companies. Each one tried to arrive first. This was a time when all-Black companies worked especially hard to prove their firefighting know-how. Kenyon had found a way to give his company an advantage.
Poles were placed in other fire stations throughout Chicago. In 1880, the Boston Fire Department put in brass poles. Within a decade, fire stations across the United States had them. Fire stations in other nations soon followed.
QUESTION 2
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Think about the article. Which of these is true about firehouses before the first pole was mounted?
Some firehouses had spiral staircases that kept horses from going upstairs.
The firehouse horse-and-buggy always beat others and arrived first.
The tubes in firehouses allowed firefighters to get downstairs easily.
Most firefighters slept on the first floor so that they could get to fires quickly.