FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING.
It is a noticeable fact that during the conflagration in San Francisco, while the modern Mission church—the original parish church of the city—fell a sacrifice to the fire, the original church built of adobe—a specie of concrete—came out unscathed, after having been exposed to the same fury of the flames. Concrete as a building material is rapidly coming to the front.
During the fire at San Francisco extensive use was made of dynamite and black gunpowder and even of cannonading the buildings as yet unconsumed because there was no possibility of throwing water on the flames. Some question the propriety of having recourse to such extreme methods, especially to the employment of dynamite or other explosives, on the ground that the flying splinters are liable to intensify the evil. It may fairly he asked, however, on the other side, how, in default of the possibility of obtaining or employing water and in the immediate presence and rapid progress of the flames, any other means could have been adopted. Experience has shown that explosives have proved effectual, even when throwing streams of water have not been able to stop the advance of a fire, and assuredly, when such awful conditions as those presented at San Francisco confront the firefighters, theories go for naught, and what has before been tried and proved itself not wanting is perforce made use of—and with good effect.
旧金山将遭受那样from the effects of an earthquake was less to lie looked for than that it should some day he swept by fire. That fate the late Chief Sullivan had always foretold as one in store for the doomed city, and in his yearly reports never failed to point out the dangers that threatened the city. These principally consisted in the large number of slightly built, brick buildings in the congested districts and of frame structures—nearly all being of that material—in the residential portion of the city. There were also immense frame hotels and palatial dwellings, themselves as large as hotels, all of wood. It is true that redwood was employed in their erection—a wood that has the reputation of being slow-burning. But, when even supposedly fireproof structures of steel and brick or stone, as some in San Francisco and Baltimore, could not withstand the fury of the flames, hut succumbed, owing to their being exposed to the combined influence of heat and fire from without, it was hardly to he supposed that wooden structures, however slow-burnmg they might be reckoned, would be able to resist the savage onslaught made by the infernal forces leagued against them, especially when the fire department was rendered powerless by the lack of water. That evil, also, was one that might have been guarded against, and had already been long foreseen by those who were best able to judge of the needs of the city in the way of fire protection. It is true that the disastrous effects of the earthquake on the water mains had not been anticipated. Yet, considering that the city was constantly exposed to earthquake shocks —that of 1898 being very severe—and that so many high buildings and flimsy brick structures had been erected within the lire limits, it might rea sonably have been expected that some steps would have been taken to secure the water supply against such total failure in the hour of need. But that very familiarity with earthquakes, it may well he supposed, had bred contempt and blinded the eyes even of the wisest to the possibility of Mich an evil as did actually happen. The disaster formed only another instance of the desirability of human beings being endowed with hindsight as well as foresight. It is possible, however, that good may come out of evil. In the first place, the San Francisco of the future will adopt another style of building, one in which wooden structures will have no part, and in which lower buildings and these composed of steel and brick or, better still, reinforced concrete, will oppose a solid, incombustible mass to the flames, and certainly will prove less likely to fall a prey to earthquakes, in the second place, New York, Chicago and other large cities, warned probably by the fate of Baltimore and San Francisco, will possibly adopt a similar policy as to their buildings, and see to it, also, that whatever is faulty in their building laws or their administration is so changed for the bet ter as to provide against even an approach to the outbreak of such a conflagration, and, as far as possible, to withstand the earthquake shock, which is not unlikely to visit Chicago and, in spite of all the (shall we call them overconfident?) insistence of scientists to the contrary, may one day smite New York. In the third place, every city may learn the lesson that, however favorably it may be situated, as in New York, with its three rivers and well-protected waterfront, and Chicago, with its inexhaustible supply from lake Michigan, the emergency may arise when it may not he possible to utilise these resources as now constituted, and so overcome the dangers of a resistless conflagration even among its so-called absolutely fireproof skyscrapers. Former experience, however, prompts the question, Will the warnings he heeded? —
At Spencer* N. C., the Spencer Water company, with a capital of $50,000, has installed a waterworks system, with more than fifteen miles of mains and forty-five hydrants. The source of supply is an artesian well in the centre of the town, the water of which is of very fine quality.
