Was the fire department capable of containing the fire?

The city had already experienced a number of relatively small fires, including an especially troublesome one that the fire department had extinguished the previous day near the neighborhood of the O'Learys. Still, the fire department was well organized and well equipped, and it had been extinguishing fires with a high degree of success. Even so, failure to properly call in the fire in the O'Learys' barn, an insubordinate employee at the fire department's main tower, and high winds blowing flames to the city's center combined to turn a small fire into one of history's most notorious blazes.