FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING

FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING

As predicted in these columns last week, lively opposition to the enforced adoption of automatic sprinklers has sprung up. It was the natural sequence to an arbitrary ordinance compelling the thousands of warehousemen in this city to swell the coffers of an autocratic combine. The efforts on the part of the trust’s representatives to solicit orders simultaneously with the issuance of the new order from Fire Department Headquarters aroused unfavorable suspicion everywhere. Commissioner Waldo has been quoted as saying that he is dissatisfied with “old practices" and has suggested that an investigation be made to ascertain whether there has been foundation for complaint in ordering automatic sprinklers. A high city official remarked last week that there is no need of apprehension so far as concerns the compulsory installation of this device, as previous similar attempts had been quashed by the courts and the same fate would be met on this occasion. However, manufacturers and warehousemen who will be most affected by the new departure have “pooled their issues” and will test the validity of this extremely unjust ordinance in the courts. One or two cases of alleged refusals to comply with the order have been taken up and the result of their trials will be watched with great interest. The legality of the course pursued by Commissioner Waldo is not questioned, nor are his motives. It is the power that caused the enactment of such a despotic law and which evidently proposes to see it enforced, that warehousemen have need to fear. The fate of the victims is safer in the hands of the present fire department officials than it might be under a future administration.

如果建议导致death-proof建筑、水泥ies would be less thickly populated. The Triangle Shirt Waist factory tragedy has called out all sorts of theories as to the cause and the remedy, and some of these views axe based on sound judgment, but unless the laws that regulate building construction are radically changed there will be similar disasters from time to time. Few promoters of factory buildings will even comply with present laws unless forced to do so, and then they frequently fail to reach the requirements. The Asch building was considered fireproof merely because the owner had gone as far as the building law compelled him to go—in fact he had built a fire escape, which the law did not call for, inasmuch as the structure was considered fireproof. But it was a “fire escape" in name only, as were the stairways, which were not wide enough to permit two persons to walk abreast. There were fife buckets, too, but ' according to evidence already adduced, they contained scarcely any water, while some were completely empty. Is this complying with the law—as loose as it is? "Fire prevention” is an ambiguous expression—it may mean a great deal, or it may mean very little. And so long as different officials are permitted to construe the law to suit themselves, there will always be a conflict of authority. When the ordinances governing the construction of buildings have been made more drastic—and we mean in every sense that word implies—more powerful; acting rapidly and violently—with their enforcement vested exclusively in the heads of the fire department, then New York will have attained as nearly to an ideal system of fire prevention as it is possible to reach. This would obviate a conflict of authority and a shirking of responsibility; it would show where to place the blame when there was blame. Culpability could be quickly and easily traced. To carry this plan out in a city with such vast ramifications as New York furnishes would mean the establishment of an independent bureau, under the control of the fire department, with a labyrinth of intricate municipal machinery. But it would revolutionize building construction and make such shocking disasters as that of the Triangle Shirt Waist factory impossible. FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING faithfully believes that this plan will ultimately be the outcome of the present agitation.

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