纽约卡巴恩火
The burning of the Metropolitan Street Railway company’s car barn at Fourteenth street and Avenue B, Manhattan, New York, which was fully reported in FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING of October 16, caused the loss of one life—that of an employe of the company—and heavy pecuniary loss besides. An illustration of it accompanies this article. It shows a portion of the tenement house adjoining (from the third door upwards), which was badly damaged by the fire, and is worthy of study, as from it will be seen the condition in which the steelwork was left after the fire. The girders on which the floors—of segmental terra-cotta arches—rested were 28 ins. deep. That portion of the barn was new and was supposed to be a good type of fire-resistant construction. That a socalled fireproof building should have collapsed the other day as quickly as it did—literally crumpling up under the influence of the intense heat and coming down with a run like a house of cards, must not be taken as any argument against fire-resistant building, only against (1) the employment of builders who do not adhere to the architect’s specifications, (2) the neglect of due inspection on the part of the underwriters’ bureau, and (3) the determination on ti'e side either of the builder or the Metropolitan Street Railway company to spend as little money upon the structure as possible. The architect had designed a four-story building, with a high lantern-roof, to be sandwiched in between tenement houses on the one side and the old car barn on Avenue B on the other. It was to be of the usual steel frame construction, with latticed columns and deep floor girders; the outer walls to be of brick, and all interior partitions and inclosing walls, including the ends of the rooflantern, of 4-inch, hard-burned terra-cotta blocks; the steel frame in the roof to be filled in with 3-inch terra-cotta roofing blocks and the lower flanges of the T’s unprotected. The roof was to be of 6-inch, hard-burned terra-cotta floor-arches, with skews to cover the lower flanges of the girders. The builder, however, with a view to saving money, used a very oldfashioned and obsolete style of skew, instead of the rather more expensive type of centering that such a kind of floor demanded. “The floor-arches were sprung midway between the upper and lower flanges of Unusually deep girders, the skews simply resting on the angle-iron supports that had been fastened to the web. Below the floor-arches both sides of the webs of the girders and the lower flanges were not protected.” In this way less than $1,200 was “saved.” It was a repetition of the same old blundering idea that, as in the case of the fire in the Roosevelt building on Broadway and 13th street. Manhattan, New York, on February 26, 1903. the steel girders and iron columns. unprotected, were of themselves fireproof. The Roosevelt building, which was supposed to be fireproof, was eight-story, with a basement. It covered an area of some noxlio feet (the burned car barn covered one of some 104x195 feet). The roof consisted of hollow-tile, segmental arches—blocks 6x6x12 inches, between 10jnch I-beams supported on double 12-inch Ibeam girders, 8-inch cast iron c lumns and the steel frame work. The lower flanges of the steel beams and girders were protected, not by terra-cotta, but by plastering or expanded metal, attached directly to the iron, without air-space. The cast iron columns supporting the roof were totally unprotected. Of these five broke clean off about two feet from the top and all the remaining columns were badly warped and twisted, as was, also, part of the framework of the outer wall, where what did duty for protection had been pulled off by the falling of the roofbeams. Hence, nearly the whole of the roof fell in. Whatever structural iron work was protected by terra-cotta was undamaged. There, as in the car barns, the fireproofing was omitted at a vital spot, with disastrous consequences.
火灾在汽车节食减肥法已经成为司空见惯的,不是in New York city onlv, but all over the country. Within the fire-limits of the borough of Manhattan alone within less than two years, r.o less than five of these buildings have been destroyed—namely, the old Forty-second street, the Fiftieth street, the Eightv-sixth street and the Fourteenth street barns and the 145th street and Lenox avenue barn in The Bronx, added a fifth. Of these only the new part of the Fourteenth street barn made any pretensions to being fireproof, and how shallow these pretensions were the event proved. In addition to these may be enumerated the fire in the garage of the New York Transportation'company at Fortyninth street and Eighth avenue, Manhattan, and that in the Daimler automobile plant in Long Island City, borough of Queens, at beth of which the loss was very heavy. Whether these fires and those elsewhere were the result of defectively insulated electrical wires or any of the other accustomed causes, it is not to the point. What chiefly concerns both the underwriters and the chiefs of fire departments in large cities is to see that the erection of no new car barns or automobile garages—perhaps, especially the latter—is not allowed, unless the plans and specifications provide for buildings as nearly approaching absolute fireproofness as the skill of man can design ; that extra precautions shall be taken to secure the greatest possible amount of protection for such of these structures as arc of an oldfashioned type; and that, if their proprietors refuse to conform to such regulations as are laid down looking towards that end, they shall be forced to do so by the authorities under heavy penalties— involving even the condemnation anel closing of the structures. This is done in the case of theatres and kindred buildings, as well as in that of factories, and there seems no valid reason why such a course should not be followed in the case of car barns and automobile garages. The number of these last is increasing very fast, and, with that increase, are also increased the dangers of fire arising within their walls. And from the fact that, as a rule, such buildings are erected in residential or populous districts, and that, sooner or later, fires are liable to break out in them at a moment’s notice, it certainly behoves the authorities to minimise as much as possible the perils of a resultant conflagration.
