Almost in the start the court-house, the building of the Washoe Club, the International Hotel, and several other large buildings, were ignited and began vomiting pillars of flame that scattered sparks and cinders far and wide. As the fire progressed the millions of feet of lumber and timbers and the thousands of cords of wood about the mining works made fires that could not be successfully combated, and which nothing could withstand. At the Consolidated Virginia Hoisting Works and Mill alone there were on fire at the same moment, and in one mass, 1,250,000 feet of lumber and timbers, and 800 cords of pine wood, not to speak of the two great buildings, and all the stores they contained; also the adjoining assay office, and contents. Across the street the freight and passenger depots of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad Company were sending up immense pillars of flame, while just south Piper’s Opera House, an immense frame structure filled with all manner of very inflammable material, was a volcano, vomiting destruction on all sides. Between and about these large structures a score or more of smaller buildings were belching flames. This was the scene at but one spot. A few rods to the southward three tall churches (Catholic, Methodist, and Episcopal) were sending tongues of flame into the very clouds, amid whole acres of smaller buildings that formed a tumultuous sea of fire. At the same time to the northward the Ophir works, with fifty smaller structures, were wrapped in flame. In the same fierce way the fire was raging over half a mile square of the very heart of the town. Although there were scores of narrow escapes, only two persons lost their lives in the fire, and two or three were afterwards killed by falling walls.