Amanda B COX
Death

House in Which Farmington Normal Girls Boarded Badly Damaged.

A Domestic, Mrs. Amanda Damon, Loses Her Life by Suffocation.

Girls Fled from Burning Building in Night Clothes - No One Injured.

TWO DEATHS IN MAINE FIRES.
FARMINGTON, Me., Jan 5. - A defective chimney in a boarding house used as a dormitory by women students of the State Normal school caused a fire which cost a life and badly damaged the building early to-day.

Mrs. Amanda Damon, a native of Lewiston, was suffocated.

The other occupants fled from the building, scantily clad and were not injured.

Mrs. Damon was employed as a domestic. The damage to the building is placed at $3000.

FURTHER PARTICULARS.
FARMINGTON, Me., Jan. 5 (Special).– Fire broke out at about 2.30 A. M. today in the Cameron House on South street. The inmates were aroused by a dense smoke which penetrated to every corner of the house. It was soon discovered that the house was on fire, the rear being a mass of flames. The fire caught about the chimney.

An alarm was sounded and the department responded promptly.

The dense smoke made it the hardest kind of a fire to fight. The fire was between the partitions and the smoke nearly suffocated the firemen.

It was supposed everyone was out of the building, but suddenly it was discovered that Mrs. Damon, a domestic, was missing and the firemen returned into the burning building and with greatest difficulty reached Mrs. Damon's room. Mrs. Damon was found prostrate on the bed in an unconscious condition.

The firemen succeeded in getting her to the window. This was no easy task, as Mrs. Damon weighs 225 pounds and the firemen were nearly suffocated. Help was quickly at hand as soon as they reached the window and Mrs. Damon was taken down the ladder.

The firemen who heroically risked their own lives, to save hers, collapsed completely on reaching the ground.

A physician was at once summoned, but before he reached the house where Mrs. Damon had been taken, she was dead. The firemen soon recovered.

The house was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, their son Freeman, Mrs. Damon and three or four Normal school girls. There was no panic and no one was hurt. Mrs. Damon's death was due to suffocation.

Everything was very quiet about the scene of the fire. People living but three doors away knew nothing of it till this morning they saw the ruins.

Lewiston Evening Journal, Lewiston, Maine, January 5, 1904



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