It’s a word that anyone fears hearing shouted in the middle of the night — fire.

Around 1:30 a.m. April 1, 1874, the occupants of the Central Hotel in Millerstown in Butler County — now the borough of Chicora — awakened to smoke and flame.

A report in the Pittsburgh Commercial described the scene vividly.

“At half-past one o’clock this morning a fire was discovered breaking from the basement story at the Central Hotel,” a dispatch to the paper read. “J.A. Frisbee, the bartender, who happened to be sitting up with a sick friend and discovered the fire, immediately rushed through the halls to arouse the guests. There were, including servants, a hundred souls in the house, and directly the corridors because the scene of the wildest dismay.

“Fortunately there were no lady guests registered last night or the story of horror and death might have been immeasurably more painful to detail. The flames drifted up the wooden walls and quicker than it takes to tell it, spread over the entire southern side, and were curling in a thousand tongues from cornice and gable.”

Despite the warning from Frisbee, the bartender, and the rush to evacuate, the flames spread quickly and, according to the Pittsburgh Commercial article, trapped many of the hotel’s servants.

“Some of the girls had the courage and presence of mind to turn their drapery over their heads for protection; and rush through the sheet of flame; and thus some escaped,” the article reads. “Others rushed back to the north side and cast themselves from the windows upon the roof of the adjoining building, whence they were rescued. Others sank bewildered in the suffocating smoke, and, like some of the guests on the floor below, yielded without a struggle to the terrible death before them.

“But the climax of the situation had not been reached until Nelly McCarty, one of the dining-room girls, appeared at the southern attic window and proposed to cast herself to the ground, forty feet below. A warning cry rose from the crowd but the poor girl would not retreat. Death was behind her and, with a wild cry of despair, she cast herself forth and fell, a pitiful mass of broken bones, upon the pavement.”

Later in the same article, the reporter noted doctors were pessimistic about McCarty’s chance for recovery, given the severity of her internal injuries. Whether she survived is unclear.

In an time long before widespread fire codes, a conflagration like the one on April 1, 1874 in Millerstown could level whole sections of town, and that’s exactly what happened.

A dispatch from the scene that ran in multiple papers around the state and the entire nation in the days following the blaze listed off the damage.

“All on the east side of Main Street from Frederick’s grocery and hardware store, including the Central and Hanlon houses, opera house, Reed & Durant’s hardware store, Link’s hotel and other buildings south,” the dispatch read. “On the west side of Main Street from Red Frank’s shebang north, inclusive of the Butler County bank, United pipe line’s office, express office, Millerstown savings’ bank and Waterman’s grocery up to Schneider’s billiard room on Slippery Rock street, north side from Frederick’s boot and shoe store, west to Broomhart’s grocery store from Hook’s dwelling south side of Slippery Rock street east to Huff’s laundry building, ninety-six buildings in all.”

A headline in the Perry County Democrat a week after the fire claimed that all but four houses in town had burned.

The total damage was estimated at $232,800, the equivalent of about $6.6 million today.

And that’s to say nothing of the loss of life.

In all, six people died in the blaze. Two employees and a guest were killed at the Central Hotel, and two guests were killed at the Hanlon Hotel. The identity of the other person who died is unclear.

Reports from the scene indicated gas was the likely cause, but at least one article noted that people associated with the Central Hotel suspected a deliberate fire.

A coroner’s jury decided the fire was an accident, likely caused by a porter leaving a burning candle in the basement. The porter was killed in the fire.

No matter the cause, the effect was devastating but not permanent.

In fact, on the morning of the fire, people in town were already talking about rebuilding.

“There is not a single person who has been a loser to any amount but what has signified his intention of rebuilding at once and on a scale surpassing anything the town has ever had,” according to the article in the Pittsburgh Commercial.

According to a history of Butler County published in 1895, that building started within a month and by the fall, the town had grown.

“By the middle of September the town boasted of 2,500 inhabitants, while 150 derricks could be seen from the reservoir,” the section on Millerstown reads.

But fire would continue to be a threat to the town.

In April 1875, just a year after the great fire, another fire tore through town, and in December 1877, a third fire destroyed nearly 30 buildings and caused $120,000 worth of damage, the equivalent of nearly $3.7 million today.

Further fires would follow in 1884 and then 1892, with both destroying many buildings, but none were are deadly or as widespread as the April 1874 blaze.