The Savannah Morning News

FIRES AND BIG HOTELS

EXPERT ADVICE
WHAT THE GUESTS SHOULD DO.

No Building is Fireproof-That Is, If There's Enough of the Fire, Says Chief Croker of the New York Department-How to Behave in a Strange Hotel or Boarding-house.

Always Locate Stairs and Fire Escape Before Retiring- Buildings Are Better Protected.

From the New York Sun.

"You know I always say that there isn't such a thing as a fireproof building," said Chief Croker, of the fire department, in answer to a Sun reporter's question. "There's nothing that fire won't burn down, if there's enough of the fire.

"Now, I'm not afraid of fire when it's in the line of my work, but I'm not taking chances on broiling. You don't get me into a room on one of the top floors of a big hotel-fireproof or not fireproof. Not much: I've attended too many hotel fires and my memory is too good. I'll take a fourth or fifth floor room at a pinch. That's high enough, thanks.

"And I'll take a hotel with fire escapes, even if it is a trifle shy on onyx and plush. There isn't money enough lying around to persuade me to go to bed in a strange hotel or house without first locating the fire escapes and stairways and sizing up the adjoining roofs and having a look at the distance from my window to the street. When I've done all that and clearly decided just what I'd do in case of fire, I go to sleep and sleep like a log; but if I don't go through that fire drill I'd probably lie awake listening for the alarm.

If there isn't a fire escape handy to my room, I want a rope. For that matter, if I had my way, every hotel room would have a rope, no matter what other fire provisions it had. A great many of them do have ropes tucked away where no one could find them. I always hunt them up and coil them by the window.

Some hotels and boarding-houses have ropes fastened to stanchions near the window, but people don't like it. They say it makes them nervous to be reminded of the chance of fire. There's common sense for you. I'd rather be reminded of the fire than not be reminded of a chance to escape from it.

How to Go Down a Rope.

"The trouble with rope fire escapes is that so few persons know how to use them. I can go down a rope hand over hand easily enough, because I'm not very fat and am in training, but a fat old party who hasn't seen a gymnasium in twenty years isn't very agile on a rope. There isn't one woman in a thousand who can hold on and let herself down easily.

Most people take hold of the rope and slide until the friction burns and cuts their hands. Then they fall off. You remember how it was at the Windsor Hotel fire. It's a good thing to take a twist of the rope around one leg, but the great thing is to keep cool. That's the one important rule in fires. Keep cool."

It sounded like a joke, and the Sun reporter looked at the chief dubiously, but the great man was grimly serious.

"Even if one remembers the rule, it doesn't always seem possible to follow it," suggested the reporter gravely.

"No, but if people would only keep cool there'd be few serious casualties from fire."

The theory seemed sound.

"I suppose it is natural for a man to lose his nerve and jump when the flames are after him. A minute seems like an hour to a man or woman on the window sill of a burning room, but in so many cases just a moment or two would give the firemen time for a rescue, and lives are lost needlessly.

"The modern buildings aren't fireproof, but they are slow in burning. There's more chance to keep the fire from spreading in them, and if it does spread, it doesn't go with a rush as in the old buildings. The chances are that any person with a level head and a knowledge of the exits could escape from the building, but those are two things the citizen who puts up at a hotel doesn't seem to have.

"The building laws of New York are infinitely better than they used to be. They are getting better all the time, and there is more effort to enforce the laws, but there's enough to be done yet. All the precautions you can introduce into an old building won't make it safe. You can't have a fire escape at every window. You can put red lights at the fire escapes and staircases, but the stairs are built near the elevator, and both make such a splendid draught shaft that in a fast fire the stairway is impracticable in no time.

Stairs Near Elevator

"The stairs are even built around the elevator shaft, you know. That is absurd. If I were building a hotel the stairways and elevators would be nowhere near each other, and there'd be outside fire escapes scattered plentifully over the building, even if they did give the architects nervous prostration. I'd put fire escapes on all buildings. What's more, not a building higher than fifteen stories should go up in the town.

"We can pump water higher than that, but no fire can be really well handled above that.

"A good many of the high office buildings are wonderfully well protected, though. I'll say that for them. There are no such fire precautions anywhere else in the world. The building has its own stand pipes, hose, nozzles, etc., and the employes are drilled in their use. Then we have had tests and fire drills in those buildings, and could make connections and get to work so quickly that it would be mighty hard for a fire to get headway-but the high hotels and apartment houses: Well!

The chief looked volumes.

"What about the tenements?" asked the reporter.

"Oh, they are better than they were, but they are bad enough. The law requires fire escapes on all of them, but the people think the fire escapes are provided as storerooms. They put the bathtubs and ice boxes and wood and coal and baby carriages and trunks out on the fire escape, and in case of a fire a man might just as well jump from the roof as try to get down the fire escape.

"Law against that? Of course there's a law against it, but who enforces it? We all take a hand at it-building department, fire department, health department. It's everybody's business, and what's everybody's business is nobody's business.

"A big majority of the tenement folk are so ignorant that they don't know the first principles of reason. The only way to keep those fire escapes clear is to watch them all the time, and who's going to do it? I haven't men enough in the fire department to do it, even if it were my business. When we do see anything wrong we report, but the time when we see the abuse is usually when the building is burning and the harm has been done.

Hand Grenades a Joke,

"The discretionary power in regard to fire precautions is with the building department, and that department accomplishes a deal, but what can be done with some buildings in this town? You can put up fire escapes and ropes and hand grenades and water buckets and hoses and any old thing the building department can think of and nothing will make those places safe for human beings except pulling them down and building them over.

Those hand grenades are rather a joke, I think. You know they say they are useful only in last ditch cloth ing establishments, where the proprietors empty them, refill them with kerosene, and hang them up, ready in case of fire.

Most of the patent fire escapes are jokes, too. If there isn't an iron fire escape handy, give me a good, stout rope.

It's a wonder to me that there aren't more serious fires in this town. They keep us pretty busy, but the boys don't have as bad a time as they used to. The modern appliances and apparatus have made fire fighting a great deal easier than it was in the old days. Still, there's more of it, and the buildings are higher.

"A fireman's work is no cinch. The public sees the spectacular side of it. It doesn't know the steady grind nor understand the desperate punishment the boys take when they are in a building just fighting fire and not making sensational rescues. I tell you it's fierce.

"Sometimes people ask me how I felt at my first fire. I don't remember it; but I suppose I went at it as every green hand does. He is awkward, but he sees what the other men do and just follows them, no matter what it costs. The average man is plucky. It's only once in a long, a very long, while that we have to discharge a new man because he funks and we see he won't do the work. And it is mighty seldom that a man resigns after his first experiences, yet it's a tough initiation sometimes. The heat overpowers him, gives him deadly nausea, sears his eyes, and knocks him out completely. It's wonderful how much heat a man can stand after he gets used to it, though. Of course there's an excitement about the work that keys one up to endurance and pluck.

"I'm willing to die fighting fire, but I don't want to die baked in my bed, and I hate strange hotels. You may just write me down as a crank on fire escapes. We need them in this town."