PHILADELPHIA WINS AWARD IN NATIONAL FIRE WASTE CONTEST
Is Given Grand Prize for Best Fire Elimination Work—Other Prize Winners National Fire Waste Council Holds Meeting
THE city of Philadelphia has won the grand prize in this year’s National Fire Waste Contest, conducted by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States and the National Fire Waste Council, through the local chambers of commerce. This fact was announced at a meeting of the Council held at the headquarters of the National Chamber in Washington, D. C., on March 29 and 30.
The other prize winners in the contest are Grand Rapids, Mich.; Greensboro, N. C.; Durham, N. C., and Fremont, Mich. The various prizes will be presented at the annual meeting of the Chamber to be held at Washington, in May.
The number of cities reporting in the Contest in 1927 was 329, an increase over previous years. The cities are divided for purposes of the Contest into five classifications based on population. The winners showed the best fire prevention records in their classes, with Philadelphia having the best reCord of all.
Marked progress in fire elimination was made during the year by the 329 cities with combined population of 25,565,093. They are credited with saving $11,972,688 or 14.8 per cent as compared with the average of their preceding five years’ experience. In 1926 the saving was $4,146,282 or 5.4 per cent. Stating it another way, 69.2 per cent of the 1927 Contestants actually reduced their property losses, while in 1926 this was true of only 60.8 per cent.
This progress can be easily grasped by a glance at the per capita losses averaged over all contestants. In 1927 it was $2.70; in 1926, $3.07 and 1925, $3.77. On a percentage basis this per capita loss dropped 14.96 per cent in 1926, and 23.3 per cent in 1927, both of these figures being in comparison with the average of the five preceding years.
Forty-one and four-tenths per cent of these competing cities reduced their actual number of fires in 1927, as compared with 28.5 per cent in 1926 and 17.1 per cent in 1925.
Fire department efficiency, building construction and housekeeping are improving as indicated by a 14.35 per cent reduction in 1927 in the number of fires in which the damage exceeded $1,000, compared with the average of the preceding five years. In 1926 this percentage was but 1.08.
From the human point of view 81.3 per cent of the contestants reported either no deaths by fire or a reduction in the number of such fatalities. A year ago the percentage so reporting was 79.7. The actual percentage decrease in the number of persons killed as compared with the average of the preceding five years was 12.6.
以下表格给192年的赢家7, together with other cities designated as honor cities because of their excellent records:
Members of the Council, which is made up of representatives of 19 national organizations and four government bureaus interested in fire prevention, were welcomed at the meeting by Lewis E. Pierson, president of the National Chamber, who called attention to the fact that in 1927, for the first time in a number of years, the total fire loss in the United States was reduced.
“There is no means of determining,” he said, “what proportion of this reduction is attributable to your efforts, but undoubtedly they were responsible for no small part of success. Your influence is felt not only in our urban centers and towns, through the medium of the contest, but it extends to the farmers and to timber lands as well. Both the farm and the timber fields are fertile for continued effort. Never before have the farmers and timberland owners been so thoroughly aroused to the importance of fire waste.
“The Council is recognized throughout the business world as the one organization, or federation of organizations, to which business can turn for united assistance in grappling with the problem of controlling fire waste. Commercial bodies throughout the country, as a result of the Council’s work, now recognize fire prevention as one of their main civic responsibilities and have active committees to see to it that the subject is followed during the entire year.
“委员会可以展望未来,知道ng that the program outlined for local fire prevention activities will enable American cities to check the inroads of fire waste if they will but follow it as so many already have done.”
制造商的工作委员会有限公司uncil was outlined by A. P. Webster, of Deere & Company, Moline, Ill., its chairman in an address entitled, “What’s Ahead in Industrial Fire Prevention.” This committee has directed its attention to reducing fire losses in manufacturing plants.
“We have found,” said Mr. Webster, “that good housekeeping is as important in the factory as in the home. No amount of money spent for fire prevention equipment will provide a good risk where good housekeeping is not maintained. A plant of inferior construction, well equipped and well maintained, may constitute a better risk than one of equal equipment and better constructed, poorly maintained.
(Continued on page292)
(Continued from page280)
“Fire prevention equipment once considered excellent has been shown by experience to be entirely inadequate. To me it seems criminal to spend large sums of money for additional buildings and manufacturing equipment without spending an adequate amount to safeguard the property against fire, and yet that is just what has been going on for years.”
W. W. Ellis, of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, spoke on “What’s Ahead in Fire Prevention Publicity,” and told the Council that in fire prevention efforts of the past too much emphasis had been on trying to make people careful and that it would have been better to give more attention to making buildings fire proof or fire resistant.
“All of our buildings,” he said, “should he so constructed as to resist fire until the fire department arrives. The ordinary family would rather have a breakfast nook than a fire proof roof. False economy is a habit of the American people when it comes to constructing fire-resistive buildings.”
Other speakers dealt with various phases of fire prevention work.
Firemen Injured in Quincy, Ill., Crash—Two firemen were injured in Quincy, Ill., when a pumper with its full crew of firemen, crashed into a tree while on the way to a fire. It was stated that an automobilist forced the apparatus driver to crash into the tree in order to avoid an impending collision.
Minneapolis to be Host to Merchants—Members of the Minneapolis, Minn., department will be hosts to local business men at two dinners—five hundred will he served each night. This is in return for the good will dinner arranged by the merchants last year at which the firemen were guests. Fire chiefs from Duluth, Rochester. St. Paid and Mankato will be invited. Chief Ringer heads the fire department committee on the arrangements.
