THE SEATTLE PIER FIRE.
In another place in this issue of FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING appears a description of the recent fire at Pier Eleven, at Seattle, Wash., by Fire Marshal Harry W. Bringhurst, a contributing editor of this journal, who speaks of the danger of having such large pier and docking buildings without provision for checking as well as extinguishing fires. The pier is entirely of light wooden construction, on timbers and piling and without any break or fire stop in its whole fire hundred feet of length and the contents included ammunition with the result that during the fire explosions of six and eight inch shells added to the peril of the firemen engaged in fighting the flames. Such conditions as described render the task of the firemen, whose work under any circumstances is one of danger, extra and unnecessarily dangerous. Fire Marshal Bringhurst states, in speaking of Seattle's large pier and dock buildings: “These immense areas full of combustible material, develop fires that are entirely beyond the efforts of the department almost from the start. Certainly firemen have no chance when a building is a mass of flames by the time water can be thrown,” and he points out that two or three heavy plank or cribwork partitions, properly constructed, would have retarded the spread of the fire and enabled the firemen to keep it out of the ammunition.
In another place in this issue of FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING appears a description of the recent fire at Pier Eleven, at Seattle, Wash., by Fire Marshal Harry W. Bringhurst, a contributing editor of this journal, who speaks of the danger of having such large pier and docking buildings without provision for checking as well as extinguishing fires. The pier is entirely of light wooden construction, on timbers and piling and without any break or fire stop in its whole fire hundred feet of length and the contents included ammunition with the result that during the fire explosions of six and eight inch shells added to the peril of the firemen engaged in fighting the flames. Such conditions as described render the task of the firemen, whose work under any circumstances is one of danger, extra and unnecessarily dangerous. Fire Marshal Bringhurst states, in speaking of Seattle's large pier and dock buildings: “These immense areas full of combustible material, develop fires that are entirely beyond the efforts of the department almost from the start. Certainly firemen have no chance when a building is a mass of flames by the time water can be thrown,” and he points out that two or three heavy plank or cribwork partitions, properly constructed, would have retarded the spread of the fire and enabled the firemen to keep it out of the ammunition.
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