Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/631

Rh is a piece of leather-bound canvas, ten feet square. Handles along the sides enable a group of firemen to hold the net taut to catch any one who may jump from above. The life net did not originate in this country with the pompier service. Canvas nets have been in use for some time, and at the present day their place is being taken by circular rope nets that are more yielding. Being formed in a circle, each man obtains a direct pull from the center. The Hunter net is composed of a spiral of rope, and the Empire net is made of concentric circles of rope, the ropes in each case being supported with radial lines. It is a most difficult matter to hold a life net securely and receive the shock of a falling body. When a man has jumped from an upper story, possibly sixty feet above the street, and his helpless body suddenly emerges from a cloud of smoke and flame that is pouring from lower windows, the firemen must instantly have the net directly under him and then brace themselves to receive the shock. The pompier ladders, etc., are also often carried on hose wagons, that every chance may be given to put them in use at the earliest moment.

There are several other articles carried on ladder trucks. The life gun or life pistol is used to shoot a slug or arrow, to which is attached a loosely coiled rope, over the roof of a building. The inmates can then pull up a stronger rope and descend to the ground. There are also short roof ladders with hooks to cling over the ridge-pole, and some departments carry a tripod ladder that may be stood under an electric wire, where a fireman with insulated shears can remove the dangerous obstruction. This ladder is the invention of Captain Griffin, of the Boston Fire Department. The ram, a heavy battering pole worked by three or more men, held a place in departments for a long time, and was used to batter down doors, etc. This is being replaced to a great extent by the Detroit door opener, a simple prying device which rips the entire lock out of place or the door off its hinges in a shorter space of time than that in which the same could be battered down. Ladder trucks are also provided with chemical extinguishers, rubber blankets, medicines for burns, and several sundries.

Although the protective departments had a forerunner in some of the early fire companies whose members carried canvas bags to be used in saving property, the insurance companies did not introduce their patrols or salvage corps for several years later. Some of the insurance companies of New York in 1839 organized a corps of bagmen, who saved what they could of endangered property. Later a two-wheeled hand wagon, supplied with half a dozen rubber covers, was put in service. Later a permanent station, equipped with a four-wheeled wagon, drawn by