FIRE SERVICE TWO PLATOON SYSTEM

FIRE SERVICE TWO PLATOON SYSTEM

Opinions of Chief Engineers as to Its Feasibility.

depa two-platoon系统应用于火rtments of the United States is now being so widely discussed as to demand some attention on the part of the municipal authorities, fire commissioners and fire chiefs. Of the firemen a very large number, especially in New York and Chicago, demand that the system should rulegenerally, and considering how much is due to them on account of the services they render to their fellow-citizens, considering, also, how they are, and were, the slaves of a gong, whose sounds they dare not, if they would, ignore, and that, as such, they have to put up with long-continued absences from all comforts, and the company of their wives and children, and that their daily lives are more or less monotonous, it may fairly be argued that they are entitled to more leisure time and to a limited day’s work. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that their higher officers and the public whom they serve are likewise entitled to consideration. It must not be forgotten that the two-platoon system does not apply to the superior officers of the department, who are subjected to precisely the same disciplinary rules as are the lower officers and the men. Yet they are not only not anxious to be included among those who are agitating that the old order should change, giving place to the new, but, so far as their unofficial utterances go, they are absolutely opposed to any such alteration being made in the existing state of things. Without going into details at present, it is sufficient to point out that the additional expense such a change would involve in the large cities—say, in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, or Boston —is an objection that cannot be lightly waived, while the possibility, not to say the probability, of the department being caught short-handed on the outbreak of some big fire, of itself offers a very serious obstacle to such a radical innovation. The experiment has been made in New York city with the police. Its failure is so conspicuous, and the injury resulting to the community so serious as to render its extension to the fire department something hardly to be attempted till the system has been given a very searching trial—much more searching than is being given it in our midst to-day. The experiment was voted for in Chicago by the city council but was promptly vetoed by the mayor of that city, the chief of whose fire department, as will he seen below, is by no means in sympathy with the idea. As, however, it is not fair to condemn any such proposal simply on the ground of its being a novelty, and as the subject will bear an ample amount of ventilation, the conductors of FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING have written to the chiefs of the principal departments and invited them to give their views on the subject for publication in these columns. Some have replied, begging to be excused from committing themselves, on the ground that they do not wish to cross the bridge till they come to it. which will not he till the agitation assumes of a tangible shape among their men.