FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING – Fire Engineering: Firefighter Training and Fire Service News, Rescue

Fireplace AND H2o ENGINEERING

If throughout each thirty day period in this year the exact same irregular losses by hearth are to be chronicled, as has been the case given that January I, the outlook is not just one that promises effectively for the insurance policies corporations, the group in standard or the citizen in certain. We may perhaps not have been frequented with any disaster this kind of as befell San Francisco past April, nor, quite possibly, with any comprehensive conflagrations this kind of as all those of Baltimore, Toronto, or Rochester. But, putting the San Francisco disaster on a single side and judging only from final year’s experiences and individuals which have ushered in the first handful of months of 1907, there would seem no cause to question that, until considerably better treatment is exercised in the building and arrangement of buildings, in keeping fire departments up to the mark in equipment and personnel, in substituting compensated fireplace departments in the more substantial towns and towns for the present volunteer, or at best only partially paid out departments, in creating everlasting at the very least the workplace of the main engineer, rather of transforming him, so as to suit the political social gathering that happens to be in energy, then the amount of tiny fires that become conflagrations may possibly be envisioned to boost, with a corresponding loss of hundreds of countless numbers of dollars. Until, also, a appropriate firealarm svstem is put in and the fireplace stations are equiped with the fastest implies of getting out to a hearth, the exact same evil results could be seemed for. If, also, in populous or congested-benefit districts, the authorities do not see to it that mains of adequate sizing are laid, with fireplace hydrants of the most modern form established on them, the exact same outdated grievance as to the impossibility of stopping a fireplace at at the time in its incipient phase will proceed to he heard—and with great cause. In the same way, also, so extended as the customers of the fireplace division are authorized to dictate to main or commissioner how numerous hrs they are to do the job, or how many off-times they are to enjoy—that is to say. if they are permitted to neglect that, so prolonged as they are in the fire-provider, they are practically less than the exact guidelines as adult males in the army or navy and not their have masters, except when their offtime comes round—just so long shall we find inefficient hearth departments, and cease to ponder when, week just after week, we see the city that suffers such circumstances to exist heading the listing of damaging and disastrous fires, just about every 1 of which goes to swell the enormous total of cash that is just about every year irrecoverably sacrificed on the altar of the fireplace-fiend.

Independently of regardless of what ended up the results in of the recent fearful accident fif it is accurate to connect with by that title what was seriously a -butchery perpetrated by the New York Central Railway business) in the fast community of Wi 11iamsbridge, Westchester county, there was 1 function which admits of exclusive observe in these columns—namely, the fireplace that broke out in the wreckage, owing to the non-incombustible materials of which the automobiles were produced. It is genuine the fireplace was incredibly before long extinguished hut that was much more by excellent luck than excellent administration on the component of the railway business. The alternatives were all the other way, specially when it is remembered that only a incredibly number of davs prior to a passenger automobile of the identical make was burned to the trucks—fortunately, devoid of any loss of lifestyle. In just about every situation, the third rail was the proximate cause of the fire. These most recent situations of the risk attending the electrical indicates of transportation, included to those which have transpired and continue to happen in the New York town subway, to say nothing at all of the Paris subway horror of some a long time ago and the many other fatal occurrences because of to the burning of the dying and maimed victims of railway carelessness, are established for our illustration, and simply call upon the men and women of the United States to insist on the use of non-combustible vehicles for avenue and railway targeted visitors, the constant inspection of the rolling inventory by skilled and trustworthy inspectors, a level-blank refusal of permission to any current transportation business to run any automobiles that are not as absolutely fireproof as science can render them, and to refuse a franchise to any business that does not agree to comply with the exact disorders. If this were being (lone on every single situation, with out panic or favor, we need to not listen to of weak-kneed metropolis officers supplying in to the demands of a enterprise like the Brooklyn Quick Transit enterprise to run its light wooden automobiles through the proposed city underground loop line in Manhattan, or sec the Interborough enterprise of New York deliberately violating its compact each individual working day and jogging passenger cars that would capture fire and burn up, as they have burned up in advance of, if a really serious collision occurred.