IMPROVING THE LONDON FIRE BRIGADE.

IMPROVING THE LONDON FIRE BRIGADE.

美国消防员在一般情况下,和纽约in particular will read with a kind of pitying interest the recommendations of the fire brigade committee of the London county council with respect to the proposed improvement on the system of fire protection at present in vogue in the British metropolis. It tells its own tale of a lack of proper facilities for turning in a fire alarm in case of need, of getting the men to turn out with their apparatus in seconds instead of minutes, and of being able to arrive at the scene of the fire in five seconds instead of five or fifteen minutes. It points not only to lack of water, but also to ignorance on the part of the firemen and their officers as to the position of the fire hydrants, whence comes the water suuply, to the want of sufficient apparatus and men with which to man it, and clearly tells in so many words that, on the occasion of the recent great fire in the City, the brigade was caught napping. The methods proposed by the committee are, to say the least of it, clumsy—in the eyes of American firemen ludicrously so. They do not suggest the maximum of speed attainable forgetting out and getting to work, only a slightly improved method of doing so—a method very far behind that in vogue in even third-class cities in the United States and Canada. The committee airily waves off as unworthy of notice any suggestion as to the utility of chemical engines or water towers—and in other ways shows its contempt for the most up-to-date methods of equipping a fire department. Yet, when the report is read between the lines, by its adoption of Sir Eyre Massey Shaw’s suggestions - all of them founded on the experience of his personal investigation of the methods of fire protection in vogue on this side of the Atlanticit is manifest that, without acknowledging the fact to an oversensitive British public, American ideas underlie the whole scheme of reform—in an embryonic state, it must be admitted, but still in such a shape as to admit of the probability of English firemen in course of time, adopting those ideas in their entirety. One thing is particularly noticeable—the unwillingness of the committee to hurry on the changes. These will entail an immediate outlay of $985,925 for fire stations and their equipment, and an additional annual outlay of $116,000—a small sum enough for the greatest and the richest city in the world to lay out in insuring against fire property worth millions upon millions—to say nothing of the additional protection thus afforded to life. To do the committee full justice, however, it lays at least equal stress upon life-saving as on the protection of property—but, then, the two go together. To avoid paralysing the good citizens or London, the report proposes to spread the adoption of these improvements over ten years, so as to let the taxpayers down easily (and it is strange how unwilling the British taxpayer is to paying for adequate fire protection, while he is the loudest in his outcry against the authorities, in case of any loss of life or great destruction of property by fire). But that Londoners should at last be brought to admit that the Metropolitan fire brigade is not altogether perfect—that it is susceptible of improvement, and that they should be willing to adopt even an approach to “ American methods ” so as to bring about that improvement is a noticeableadvance.

美国消防员在一般情况下,和纽约in particular will read with a kind of pitying interest the recommendations of the fire brigade committee of the London county council with respect to the proposed improvement on the system of fire protection at present in vogue in the British metropolis. It tells its own tale of a lack of proper facilities for turning in a fire alarm in case of need, of getting the men to turn out with their apparatus in seconds instead of minutes, and of being able to arrive at the scene of the fire in five seconds instead of five or fifteen minutes. It points not only to lack of water, but also to ignorance on the part of the firemen and their officers as to the position of the fire hydrants, whence comes the water suuply, to the want of sufficient apparatus and men with which to man it, and clearly tells in so many words that, on the occasion of the recent great fire in the City, the brigade was caught napping. The methods proposed by the committee are, to say the least of it, clumsy—in the eyes of American firemen ludicrously so. They do not suggest the maximum of speed attainable forgetting out and getting to work, only a slightly improved method of doing so—a method very far behind that in vogue in even third-class cities in the United States and Canada. The committee airily waves off as unworthy of notice any suggestion as to the utility of chemical engines or water towers—and in other ways shows its contempt for the most up-to-date methods of equipping a fire department. Yet, when the report is read between the lines, by its adoption of Sir Eyre Massey Shaw’s suggestions - all of them founded on the experience of his personal investigation of the methods of fire protection in vogue on this side of the Atlanticit is manifest that, without acknowledging the fact to an oversensitive British public, American ideas underlie the whole scheme of reform—in an embryonic state, it must be admitted, but still in such a shape as to admit of the probability of English firemen in course of time, adopting those ideas in their entirety. One thing is particularly noticeable—the unwillingness of the committee to hurry on the changes. These will entail an immediate outlay of $985,925 for fire stations and their equipment, and an additional annual outlay of $116,000—a small sum enough for the greatest and the richest city in the world to lay out in insuring against fire property worth millions upon millions—to say nothing of the additional protection thus afforded to life. To do the committee full justice, however, it lays at least equal stress upon life-saving as on the protection of property—but, then, the two go together. To avoid paralysing the good citizens or London, the report proposes to spread the adoption of these improvements over ten years, so as to let the taxpayers down easily (and it is strange how unwilling the British taxpayer is to paying for adequate fire protection, while he is the loudest in his outcry against the authorities, in case of any loss of life or great destruction of property by fire). But that Londoners should at last be brought to admit that the Metropolitan fire brigade is not altogether perfect—that it is susceptible of improvement, and that they should be willing to adopt even an approach to “ American methods ” so as to bring about that improvement is a noticeableadvance.