On August 20, 1933, Ainsworth just escaped being burned off the face of the earth.
About 2:30 on that Sunday afternoon, Henry Sievert put his car away in his garage, next to a car owned by Leonard Lindborg, and then left the garage to go on about his business, never suspecting that anything was amiss.
Somehow, a fire started inside the garage. Later speculation focused on a short-circuit in one of the cars. Whatever the cause, both cars and the garage itself were soon engulfed in flames.
The fire quickly outstripped the amateur fire-fighting of the Ainsworth residents. Someone called the Hobart fire department as the blaze spread south to William Fratzke's chicken coop and barn. Inside the barn were two tons of coal and a large supply of firewood.
The Hobart fire department showed up and began fighting the fire with chemicals. When their chemical supply ran out and the fire still raged, they began pumping water from two neighbors' wells. By then, the fire was threatening the Fratzke home. The Crown Point fire department arrived and joined in the fight. The combined forces got the blaze under control, but it had been a close shave. According to the firemen, "[H]ad the wind been blowing from the opposite direction the entire town would have been burned."
The barn and the chicken coop, the garage and its contents, were all destroyed — about $2,500 worth of property (roughly $41,600 in today's dollars). Mr. Fratzke had no insurance.
Sources:
♦ "Ainsworth Is Threatened by Sunday Fire." Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.) 22 Aug. 1933. Access Newspaper Archive. Lake County (IN) Public Library 29 Nov. 2009
♦ "Databases and Tables: CPI Inflation Calculator." United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. 30 Nov. 2009
♦ "Hobart." The Times (Hammond, Ind.) 22 Aug. 1933. Access Newspaper Archive. Lake County (IN) Public Library 29 Nov. 2009
♦ Ross Township Fire Service: Ainsworth Deep River Volunteer Fire Department. 30 Nov. 2009
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