Because the fire was not too large, the neighboring merchants came demanding compensation. The bakery owner offered to help put it out, but said any compensation could only be paid in bread.
The neighboring merchants were clearly dissatisfied, so they threatened to call the police. In the process, they even drove away the volunteer fire brigade that had come to fight the fire.
As the two sides argued, the flames flared up again. This time, however, even their combined efforts could not extinguish the blaze before them. As time passed, it spread to more shops, and the two sides had no choice but to seek help from the fire brigade organized by the local government.
But when they reached the fire station near the market, they discovered that the brigade had already gone out to fight another fire. They could only spend money to hire a professional fire brigade.
Most of these professional brigades had government connections, and the official city fire brigade worked in close tacit understanding with them, deliberately sharing part of their business with the former.
As everyone knew, professional fire brigades practiced paid firefighting: the larger the fire, the greater the reward; the longer it burned, the better the business.
So it was nothing new for the fire brigade to jack up its price on the spot. After all the haggling, the flames spread to a lamp-oil factory. As everyone knew, burning oil tanks were extremely dangerous even in the present day.
So the fire brigade chose to run away outright.
The great fire then spread from the commercial street to the slums, and from the slums to the noble residential district on the outskirts of the city center.
The great families immediately summoned the fire brigades they kept themselves, ready to show what they could