As soon as the threatening character of the fire was realized appeals were sent broadcast for help and desperate measures were adopted to prevent the spread of the flames. To gain that end huge buildings were leveled through the agency of dynamite. Eleven fire engines and crews were hurried from New York by a fast special train and they joined in the battle early and fought like demons until exhausted. Philadelphia, Wilmington, Washington, Frederick, Md., Westminster, Md., and York, Pa., each sent brave contingents of men with an equipment of apparatus to reinforce the desperate firemen of Baltimore. The first attempt at dynamiting was in the large building of Armstrong, Cator & Co., but it failed to collapse and attention was turned to the building at the southwest corner of Charles and German streets, where six charges of dynamite, each charge containing 100 pounds, were exploded. The tremendous force of the explosion tore out the massive granite columns that supported the building and left it with apparently almost no support, but the walls failed to collapse and stood until the flames had crossed Charles street and were eating into the block between Charles and Light streets. Meantime the fire had been communicated to the row of buildings on South Charles street, between German and Lombard streets, and all those places, occupied principally by wholesale produce and grain dealers, were in flames. Before midnight the Carrollton hotel was in flames and the fire was sweeping toward Calvert street with irresistible fury. It was a terrible Sunday afternoon and night! People forgot their usual devotions at church to pack their most valued possessions ready for flight. Men of wealth left their families and firesides to join in the work of suppressing the flames. Women prepared to flee with their valuables before the wave of fire they momentarily expected to roll down upon them. Wealth and employment were disappearing under the advance of the fiery element and gloom, fear and dark forebodings settled down upon the doomed municipality. But there was neither sleep nor rest for man, woman or child. Firemen working on the south side had succeeded in checking the flames at Lombard street and, as the wind was blowing from the northwest, there was no danger of it spreading farther in that direction. The western limit had also been reached at Howard street and the danger was confined to the east and north. The progress of the flames toward the north had in the meantime been so rapid as to be simply appalling. From structure to structure they flew, licking up the massive buildings as if they were composed of paper. In the block between German and Baltimore streets they flew along and almost before it could be realized the buildings along Baltimore street were blazing from roof to basement.