The businesses that lined Water Street and Duckworth Street were destroyed as the fire spread throughout the downtown area. Rev. Harvey said, "The beautiful shops, full of valuable goods; the stores behind, containing thousands of barrels of flour and provisions of all kinds; the fish stores; the wharves, which it had cost immense sums to erect, -- disappeared one by one into the maw of the destroyer...the whole of Water Street, on both sides, was 'swept with the besom of destruction.'" The fire continued to burn into the night and the early hours of the next morning. Rev. Harvey's description of the restless night said that "the terror-stricken inhabitants flying before the destroyer,… the cries of weeping women hurrying with their children to places of safety -- all constituted a scene which not even the pen of Dante could describe." Similarly, Kent said of that night, Daybreak on the morning of July 9, 1892 revealed the full extent of the fire's devastation. Kent described the sight of local residents viewing the desolation: Rev. Harvey presents a similar description: Less than $5,000,000 of the total estimated losses of $13,000,000 were covered by insurance. A large influx of financial aid from Britain, Canada and the United States helped the city recover from its devastating losses. Many of the present-day registered heritage structures were either built or re-built in the reconstruction period after the 1892 fire. The most prominent architect of this era in St. John's was John Thomas Southcott. He designed numerous Second Empire-styled buildings that had distinctive mansard roofs with bonnet-topped dormers protruding from the concave-curved roof surface. Southcott was so prolific that the term the "Southcott style" became associated with the architecture in the re-built city. Each year in Southcott's honour, the Newfoundland Historic Trust presents the Southcott Award for excellence in the restoration of heritage structures. Because of the devastation of the fire, the city of St. John's reorganized its fire department. It had previously relied only on volunteer brigades. By the end of 1895, the city had hired 22 paid firefighters and established three new fire stations throughout the city. Control of the fire department was placed under Newfoundland Constabulary’s Inspector-General. See also Great Fire of 1846, also in St. John's References External links Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador Paul Butler. 1892, a 2008 novel about the fire. Paul Butler. St. John's: City of Fire Disasters in Newfoundland