Transport: Disaster Wagon

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One cold day about three years ago, Aaron Meier Frank of Portland, Ore. stopped to watch a fireman hustling up a ladder with a steaming pot of coffee for his water-soaked comrades in the upper floors. That sight gave Aaron Meier Frank an idea. He would give Portland an elaborately equipped "disaster wagon." Mr. Frank, a lively sportsman of 48 and benevolent scion of oldtime Portland merchants, is president of Portland's huge Meier & Frank department store.

Last March, with due ceremony, Benefactor Frank presented his streamlined "disaster wagon" to the city. Hordes of Portlanders gaped at its shiny coffee urn, at emergency hospital and surgery paraphernalia, gas masks, water pumps, a two-way radio, portable searchlights, acetylene torches, wrecking tools, respirators, even snowshoes and toboggans for winter rescues.

Up to last week the disaster wagon had practically nothing to do. Then heavy rains fell on Portland. Out roared the "disaster wagon" on its first real job—pumping out a flooded basement. The building: Lipman Wolfe's department store (just across the street from Mr. Frank's store), his biggest competitor.