When Competing Fire Companies Used To Race To Fires

Before there were organized city fire departments, paid for by taxpayers,  there were volunteer fire companies, groups of men who would band together and fight fires in the community whenever needed. In fact, they would sometimes compete on which company could get to a fire first. Since there were three separate volunteer fire companies in Covington in the early days, sometimes it would get pretty interesting. Here's an article I wrote that explained the process in detail. Click on the image below to read the article. 

I was impressed by the concept of volunteers competing with each other to put out fires, so I wrote a song about it, and it was included among the songs selected for the St. Tammany Rivers music CD released in the early 1990's.

Here are three pictures of the fire companies getting ready for a parade. Click on the images to see a larger version. 

 

Sounding the alarm...