Dakota Datebook

A Fatal Fall

November 28, 2022 — On this day in 1908, the Grand Forks Herald reported one man’s curious experience with fire.

No one was certain how the fire at the St. Anthony and Dakota Elevator got started. Speculation suggested that an engine passing on the railroad tracks located nearby threw off some dangerous sparks. In any case, the fire started quickly and went unnoticed until some passersby spotted and reported it.

Any property fire is dangerous, but this elevator was surrounded by railroad property, a coal chute, the Cargill elevator, and a string of boxcars. Everyone knew the fire had to be contained quickly before it spread. The firefighters battled the fire tirelessly. Some of the other local men helped. One was Andy Cost of Park River.

While helping the firemen pull a hose into the air, Cost braced himself against the coal chute platform, forty feet in the air. Smoke and ash billowed over him and the other men. They were already wet with sweat, and the soot stuck to their skin. They were warm despite the cold of the air around them. There was shouting and Cost and the other men strained to hoist the hose up further. Suddenly—a loud noise, and the platform collapsed, and Cost plummeted toward the frozen ground below.

It was a 40-foot drop, a fatal fall—but miraculously, Cost survived.

He hit a projecting beam on his way down, interrupting the force of his plunge, and landed on the ground. Cost laid there, severely injured. Those people nearby immediately called for some doctors to help him. The diagnosis: Cost had fractured two of his ribs, and also had severe internal injuries.

Firefighters were successful in keeping the fire from spreading. The St. Anthony and Dakota Elevator was completely destroyed, as was a great part of the 12,000 bushels of grain inside the building, but everything around it was saved—in cluding Cost.

Cost lived for twelv more years—tim enough to marry his wif Tina, and to join the ser vice. He became a mem ber of the 40th Field Ar tillery. He also had tim to bury his older brothe and to father two chil dren before he died in 1920. He had time to tel and retell his story.