THE HOUSE-BURNING SYSTEM.
CALAMITY is the great teacher of mankind; and though her lessons are severe and frequent, it yet requires a numerous suc- cession of her admonitory thumps on the heart before men's heads will become sensible to her warnings. Lives may be lost, and a passing exclamation of horror, or an expression of sym- pathy or regret, followed by a subscription for the sufferers, is all that comes of an event that rung through all the country so long as the paragraph-mongers could keep up the "intense excite- ment" it created : but destruction of property communicates an electric shock to that great ganglion of commercial sensation the breeches-pocket, that is felt through all the pactolian nerves of 'wealth. A plague desolated London ; but it required a destructive Ere to clear the ground for the citizens to set about remedying, though but in part, the evils that were the cause of both calami- ties.
The immense amount (between 900,0001. and 500,0000 of pro- perty destroyed at the late fire in Tooley Street—about 100,0001. of which falls upon the Sun Fiie-office alone—may perhaps cause some energetic efforts to be made for the employment of more efficient means than have been hitherto adopted either of putting out fires or of arresting their progress, if not of preventing them altogether. The effect of the system of fire-insurances, like that of the Drown- ing at Sea Society, has been to perpetuate the evils it was intended to avert : individuals are secured from pecuniary loss, but burnings and drownings continue. With such a vast amount of capital, and so many practical men engaged in the business of preventing and repairing damage by fire, it is surprising that in the present improved state of mechanical science no mode should have been discovered of extinguishing a burning house. Our engines do not put out fires, but only keep them from spreading, with the aid of party-walls: where these are wanting, the only preventive means is to isolate the flames by pulling down adjoining build- ings. We laugh at the Turks, who suffer whole streets of houses to be burnt down and then quietly build them up again of the same inflammable materials : but we are not much wiser in our generation. Our buildings are not quite so quiskly destroyed by fire, but they are scarcely less easily set light to, and their ultimate destruction is hardly less certain. Cast-iron beams and columns and stone staircases may be employed, but there is enough wood used in the construction of buildings to carry the fire from room to room and from floor to floor; and the shell of brick that remains is only a dangerous ruin. Surely some plan of building might be adopted, by which a fire breaking out in any one apartment would be confined to it. This, however, is an ulterior consideration : the more immediately im- portant point is the means of extinguishing fires that break out in buildings as at present constructed. Every one must have been struck with the absurdly inadequate powers of our fire-engines : it would be ludicrous, were it not a melancholy sight, to see a score of men panting and toiling to squirt a tiny stream of water on to a blazing house—it rather augments than helps to quench e flames : a dozeu such jets playing at once can produce very little effect on a great body of fire; the immense heat converts the small quantity of water that comes in contact with the flames at one time into gas that adds fuel to them. The utmost that the best-served engines can do to stop the progress of the fire, is by saturatineethe adjoining buildings with water, or quenching parts partially ignited, or half burnt out : to quell a body of flame such as a house on fire presents, is beyond their capability.
The stream of BRAITHWAITE'S floating engine on the Thames is about the bigness of one's arm, and it is said to throw up a ton of water a minute: here, then, we have an engine of efficient power; but it is only available in eases of fire near the river-side and then not at low-water,—which was the cause of its not render- ing such good service at the fire in question. Deficiency or delay in the supply of water is the common complaint at all fires; and the water-companies also complain of the enormous waste of water, which they allege to be the cause of the deficiency, though it can- not be of the delay. The quantity of water suffered to run down into the sewers, is doubtless more than is used in checking the progress of the flames. Surely there are other methods of supply- ing an engine with water than by flooding the streets ? A pipe screwed on to the main, having branches communicating with the hose of several engines, would convey all the water withdrawn from the reservoir on to the fire ; and such an increase of propelling force might be supplied as would project a greater volume of water to the requisite height. Steam power is at present the most availablefor this purpose ; and we used to hear mention made of a steam fire-engine, which performed wonders. What has become of it ? The efficacy of a stream of water less than six inches diameter seems to us to be inadequate to the quenching of a mass of tire: if a whole cistern of water could be raised to the requisite height and overturned on the flames, a few repetitions of such a dose might suffice to extinguish them at once, with less labour and a
far smaller consumption of water than by the present mode. Should this not be practicable, however, the column of water pro-
pelled by the engines ought at least to be greatly increased ; and
some mode adopted for preventing the waste of water, and secur- ing a prompt supply. When the fire-insurance companies suffer so largely as the Sun is reported to suffer, we may reasonably ex- pect that the Directors, looking to their own interest, will cast about for some better protection from loss, which will benefit the public generally. The first step to an improvement of the fire- police has been effected by adopting the principle of cooperation : it now remains to put an efficient mechanical power into the hands of the Fire Brigade.
In connexion with this subject, we are glad to remark, that some parishes are setting the good example of providing fire- escapes of simple and efficient construction for public use.
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