Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/85

 FIRE INSURANCE 79

is a very diflPerent problem from that of prevention of fires in cities, and this again differs from the problem presented by scattered buildings. We have done something toward the prevention of forest fires, and the Forestry Bureau is giving this problem some good thought. We are doing practically nothing in the study of the problem of prevention of fires among buildings.

The problem is apparently not one of extreme difficulty. There is every reason to anticipate its satisfactory solution after adequate study. In the study of fireproof construction suitable for large public and com- mercial buildings, structures of many types should be built and burned and scientifically accurate knowledge obtained as to their behavior under conditions paralleling the real conditions of actual fires. Still more important is study of prevention of fires among infiammable buildings. The problem will not be solved until inexpensive methods are devised which will prevent any fire getting beyond the room in which it orig- inates^ however infiammable be the material of the building itself or of its furnishings, and the substance used in thus putting out the fire at its start must not be water but must be something that will not itself do damage to the most delicate fabrics. It is quite likely that automatic sprinklers throwing chemical fire-extinguishing substances may be found to meet the need. If it proved best to use substances injurious to human beings, automatic alarms could be used in all chambers or other inhabited rooms to rouse the occupants before the discharge of the deleterious chemicals. But discussion of such details is not appropriate here.

Suppose we should appropriate a quarter of a billion dollars, the amount of a single year's fire loss, to the organization and support of a Bureau of Fire Prevention, calling to the work of this bureau the three best chemists, the three strongest physicists, and the three keenest en- gineers in the world. How long would it be before they had found very inexpensive methods of protecting all buildings against fire, how- ever inflammable their construction ? The problem is childishly simple beside those which men of science are attacking daily and with success.

How absurd it is that we have fires to-day ! They should long ago have become a thing of the past. On the Sunday when the great Bal- timore fire broke out, the author was standing in the door of one of the churches after service, talking to the Eeverend Dr. D'Aubigny, of Paris. When a hook-and-ladder wagon galloped past Dr. D'Aubigny asked, ''What is that?*' On being told it was fire-fighting apparatus on the way to a fire he said, " Oh ! That is something I must see, an American fire. We do not have them in Paris.'' Paris, without serious study of fire prevention, has taken the expensive method of fireproof construc- tion. We can well afford to use this same method for large public and commercial buildings, but we need also to install in all buildings, as

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