New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1877-04-12
ANOTHER FTERY CALAMITY.

When the Brooklyn Theater was burned the
prediction was more than once made by men
conversant with such risks, that the next
great loss of life by fire would probably be in
one of our large hotels. The experience of
those whose business it is to insure against the
loss of property by fire cOnclusively points to
the fact that hotels are in general more likely
to burn than large stores. Hence the rates of
insurance are higher, and hotels are
second-class risks" Judged by the same
standard, both hotels and stores are very
much more in danger of burning than dwell
ings-even than tenement-hOuses. Hotels, Oh
insurance schedules, stand midway between
private dwellings and such dangerous risks as
thcaters and planing-mis. In respect to the
peril of human life, hotels are quite as bad as
tenement-h0u in crowding people together
where they may be burned, and are very
much more peiilOus to humanity in their hight,
their usual mode of construction, the more
abundant use of fire in cooking and warming
all of which increase the risk of burning
and IN the utter inaccessibility of many of
their apartments in case of fire below. Yet
for our tenement houses the law has required
fire. escapes, movable scuttles, and the like ;
what has been done in that direction is not at
all too much but as to the far greater danger
of loss of life by fire in our hotels, the pre-
cautions are not in general nearly so complete
There are hotels by the dozen that could be
named in this city which are just as likely to
take fire and burn up a number of their in
mates as was the hotel at st. Louis.
There is q certain sameness i'll all these
events. The burning of the Southern Hotel is
Just like the burning of other great hotels
which we have heretofore chronicled-the same
terror, the same Intellectual attempts to escape,
the same sickening tragedy! All that can be
said of wise and conscientious precautOn
against such catastrOphes has been said a
thousandtimes and we feel natural reluctance
to go over again the old routine of comment,
or to rehearse the old reflections Is it possible
to build caravanscry six stories high without
danger of Wholesale death by fire The
problem seems to be simple enough. Either it
can be done or it cannot be done. If it can
not be done, the sooner we stop trying to do
it the less probable will be these constant
repetitions of accidental death in one of its
most horrible FORMS If it can be done, why
not do it
1t is useless to say that these fatal fires are
a consequence of human infirmity; that they
are a mysterious providence; that they are
fated to occur, and cannot be prevented. We
certainly are not obliged by any law, human
or divine, to build inns six or ten stories high,
or to build them big enough to contain the
population of small village. These enormous
editices are no doubt convenient to the public
and profitable to the projectors; but if they
are not safe, but on the contrary if those
lodging in them do so always at the risk
of life, they must be exchanged for build
ings less lofty, just as in countries sub
ject to earthquakes common sense leads
the inhabitants to put up houses of
only one or two stories. The St. Louis fire
only proves, what was well enough known be-
fore, that if a fire be kindled in the lower
part of a very high building, under cOndi-
tons which insure its rapid spread, those
who are in the fifth or sixth story have but
little chance of escaping with life, or at least
with whole limbs. The mortality, compared
with what it might have been, is small, so far
as the facts are yet ascertained: but all
human lives are precious, and the sudden
and accidental extinction of a number of
them is calamity, whether the number be
fifty or five hundred. Our civilization kills in
such wholesale way, and so often, that we
are becoming hardened to the real horror of
such an event. We are, however. inclined to