El Edificio / Cronologica del Cuerpo de Bomberos Municipal de Ponce

In Ponce, the pavilion designed by Don Máximo Meana y Guridi for the 1882 Great Exposition Fair, which showcased Puerto Rico’s art and industry and drew 2,476 visitors to local hotels and inns, became the home of the fire department after the city council’s 1883 definitive reorganization of a corps that had protected the city from fires and disasters since the mid-19th century; under Meana y Guridi, then mayor and colonel, the firehouse was moved there, making the building a lasting symbol of the service, selflessness, discipline, sacrifice, and courage of Ponce’s firefighters. The history of the Municipal Fire Department of Ponce includes its origins after the 1846 fire in the Playa neighborhood that destroyed eighty percent of its structures, the creation of volunteer fire departments decreed by the Spanish governor Conde de Mirasol, the establishment of the Municipal Civil Fire Department of Ponce in 1853, reorganizations in 1862, 1879, and definitively on February 2, 1883, and the founding of the Firefighters Band under Don Juan Morel Campos. In 1885 the firefighters moved to their headquarters in the square, formerly the Products Pavilion of the 1882 fair exposition; later milestones included construction of the Firefighters Mausoleum in 1904 and its inauguration in 1911, raffling houses for firefighters in 1906, extinguishing fifteen major fires in 1909, service during the 1916 fire at P.R. Drug Co. and the funeral procession of Don Luis Muños Rivera, the first motor fire pump in Puerto Rico in 1918 built by the Mayoral brothers on a Pope-Hartford chassis, aid to earthquake victims and fire prevention in 1918, the 1983 centennial of the corps’ reorganization and the band’s founding, rescue work after the 1985 Mameyes neighborhood collapse, prevention of the total destruction of a neighborhood during the 1988 Calle California fire, integration into the Puerto Rico State Fire Service in 1989, and restoration of the old firehouse to its original state in 1990.

Ponce, Puerto Rico · United States