The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1871-11-10
Gptmittg State Snitraat.
THE GREAT FIRES OF THE NORTH
. NIsia 4E NIA WEST


The accounts, both of the woods and
city fires, impress upon us some facts in
combustion Of great practical Importance,
and which have been ignored to great ex-
tent in this country.
First. Our cities are laid out without ref
erence to fire spaces, where stand can be
made in great fire. In Chicago, especial
ly of all cities, the most exposed to fire, by
reason of its vast prairie environment and
fierce winds, we find several miles of COM
pactly built blocks, largely wooden, with
no parks or vacant squares. No city or
village should be built without such spaces.
Health, convenience of business, and safety
alike require them.
Second. The total inadequacy of ordinary
fire-proof buildings and safes is seen in the
Chicago fire. 1t is quite easy to render a
building fire-proof as to any interior source
of combustion. But to enable a building
to staid such fire as may take place in
any great city as now built, it must be
made of asbertos, or protected by walls
OF earth many feet in thickness. No vault
or safe gives absolute safety for papers un-
less excavated in the ground, or covered
like bomb-proof magazine in fortress.
In great fire we have the phenomena
exhibited in smelling furnace, where the
most refractory materials, iron and quartz
sands are melted. Thus at Chicago build
ings Of stone and iron, melted under blast
Of intensely heated hydrogen and oxygen
gasses, precisely as the oxy-hydrogen
blow-pipe reduces the ore upon a small
scale. The moment any considerable num-
Der of wooden buildings became simulta-
neously infiamed, water ceased to have
any power of extinguishing the fire, because
the heat converts the water into hydrogen
and oxygen, themselves inflammable gasses.
The vast upward current of hot air in
creases the wind in constantly accelerating
ratio, aud the gasses exhaled by resinous
woods, and vast stores of paint, pitch and
petroleum, were blown in great volumes
over the city.
These gasses, hot and fed with fresh air
as they passed, bursting into flame like the
earbonic oxide and hydrogen which issues
from blast furnace, struck walls Of stone
or iron, and they crumbled and withered
like wood. 1t was an oxy-hydrogen blow
pipe on vast scale. All ordinary precau-
tons and expedients of defence, became pue-
rile in dealing with such fire.
Even the tunnel pier, two miles in the
Lake, was saved only by constant applica-
tions of water to its surface. 1t is clear
then, that there is no safety where any con-
siderable portion Of a city is built Of wood.
Even large accumulations of lumber or
wood may furnish the fuel of an uncontrol-
able fire. which will melt down whole city
in its furnace heat.
All experience now shows that every
wooLen city is destined to destruction.
Even q few blocks Of wooden buildings
may destroy the rest. His remarkable
fact IN the Chicago fire, H.m aclile tie fire
started among acooden buildings the fire.
proof portion Of the city was burnt, while
that part almost entirely built of wood re-
mains. This was a chance result of the
winds, and the rest is doomed at no distant
day.
Property is far safer on the sides oi
Hecla or Vesuvius, than in a city that
permits wooden blocks.
We are glad to see that the new govern
ment of Chicago, headed by Joseph Me-
dill as mayor, are pledged against permit
ting another wooden building to be erected
in the city. Let every other village and
city corporation do the same, and the fear
ful disaster at Chicago will not have been
lost upon the country.
The wood fires have originated in vast
masses of brush and tree-tops, aecumulat-
ing in the woods where timber has been
cut tor successive seasons. This accumu-
lation has been so great that when once in
full combustion the green forests of cedar,
fir and pine, full of resin, took fire, and
the gasses before mentioned leaped from
the woods across great intervals Of open
land, destroying everything before them.
We are in the same danger in some parts Of
Virginia, and it is proper to consider
whether law, requiring choppers to burn
all brush before the dry season, is not re-
quirea by the public safety, in a region
where forests cover so much of the surface.
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WE DON'T EXCUSE OUR ROGUEs.
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