The city's fire brigade was informed of the fire at Dillon's Cross shortly before 10 pm and were sent to deal with it at once. On finding that Grant's department store on St Patrick's Street was ablaze, they decided to tackle it first. The fire brigade's Superintendent, Alfred Hutson, called Victoria Barracks and asked them to tackle the fire at Dillon's Cross so that he could focus on the city centre; the barracks took no heed of his request. As he did not have enough resources to deal with all the fires at once, "he would have to make choices – some fires he would fight, others he could not". Hutson oversaw the operation on St Patrick's Street, and met Cork Examiner reporter Alan Ellis. He told Ellis "that all the fires were being deliberately started by incendiary bombs, and in several cases he had seen soldiers pouring cans of petrol into buildings and setting them alight".
