This Edison feature has some good footage of fire-fighters racing to the scene of a fire, and it is one of the better movies of what was then a popular genre. It also represents a resourceful idea on the part of the Edison Company, as part of a series of movies made in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in order to supply some locally-made features for a new theater.
The footage combines the sight of horse-drawn fire-fighting vehicles going past the camera with a good view of the snow-covered street and buildings of the December morning on which it was filmed. It still looks very good, and the scene is so well captured that you can see the breath of the horses as they hurry through the cold morning air.
The snowy setting is the main thing that distinguishes this from the numerous other 1890s features that also showed fire-fighters in action from a similar diagonal angle. The print looks just a little grainy, but even that could simply be blowing or falling snow.
"The Morning Alarm" might be easily confused with another Edison feature, "A Morning Alarm", which was filmed about a month earlier in Newark. This Harrisburg feature was filmed at the same time as Edison's "The First Sleigh Ride", which itself is a pleasant little movie. "The Morning Alarm" is still worth seeing, and it seems likely that it probably also achieved its original purpose rather well.