In 1862 Newark became the first Fire Department to use horses to pull their engines to the fires. Response times would dramatically change and the dangers the firefighters would encounter would increase. Now every incident was a possible hazard. The future would expose the dangers and new challenges the firefighters would encounter and endure.
Building construction and the cities expansion was rapid and confined to 50 by 100 lots that would be too small to keep fire from jumping and spreading. More people brought more disastrous possibilities and the likelihood of disaster looms continuously. The Newark Fire Department has plenty of Line of Duty fatalities to back up this claim and time and technology is no friend to the Firefighter.
The apparatus was moving faster and faster. Horses ran faster than men. These men hang on to the back of apparatus. Now just responding to a fire was dangerous and life threatening. This would become fact as men got thrown as apparatus overturned. In the decades to come many men who would be lost to responding to the incident in addition to the other deadly forces.
Fireman James Stivers, badge #13, served in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. He was appointed on 6/1/1889 and assigned to Engine 2. On 3/31/1894, while Engine 2 was responding to an alarm, he fell off the steamer and was killed under its wheels. He was 55 years old at the time of his death.