Gulf Coast breeze. [volume] (Crawfordville, Fla.) 1897-19??, 1898-03-25
HEROES WHO FIGHT FIRE
THEIR RISKS INCREASE IN THE RATIO
OF A clTYs PROGRESS.

the Other Half Lives" aud other
studies of tenement-house life In New
York, contributes to the Century, in
the series of "Heroes of Peace,
an article on "Heroes who Fight
Fire." Mr.. Riis says of the New York
fireman.:
His life is too full of real peril for
him to expose it recklessly--that is to
say, needlessly. From the time when
he leaves his quarters in answer to an
alarm until he returns, he takes risk
that may at any moment set him face
to face with death in its most cruel
form. He needs nothing so much as
clear head; and nothing is priced so
highly; nothing puts him so surely in
the line of promotion; for as he adj
vances in rank and responsibility, the
lives of others, az well as his own,
come to depend on his Judgment. The
act of conspicuous daring which the
world applauds, is oftenest to the fire.
man matter of simple duty that had
to be done in that way because there
was no other. Nor is it always, or
usually, the hardest duty, as he sees
1t. 1t came easy to him because he is
an athlete trained to do such things,
and because once for all it is easier to
risk ones life in the open, in the sight
of ones fellows. than to face death
alone, caught like rat in trap.
That is the real peril which he knows
too we'll; but of that the public hears
when he has fought his last fight, and
lost.
How literally our everyday security
of which we think, il we think Of it
at all, as a mere matter of course-is
built upon the supreme sacrihce of
these devoted men, we realize at long
intervals, when disaster occurs such
as the one in which Chief Bresnan and
Foreman Rooney lost their lives three
years ago. They were crushed to
death under the great water-tank in a
Twenty-fourth street factory that was
on fire. It's supports had been burned
away. An examination that was then
made of the water-tanks in the city
discovered eight thousand that were
either wholly unsupported, except by
theroof-beams, orpropped on timbers,
and therefore q direct menace, not
only to the tiremen when they were
called there, but daily to those living
under them. 1t isnot pleasant to add
that the departments just demand for
a law that should compel landlords
either to build tanks on the wall or on
iron supports has not been needed
yet; but that is, unhappily, an old
story.
Seventeen years ago the collapse of
Broadway building during fire con-
WINGED the community that stone pill
lars were unsafe as supports. The
fire was in the basement, and the fire.
men had turned the hose on. When
the water struck the hot granite col
umns, they cracked and fell, and the
building fell with them. There were
upon the roof at the time dozen men
of the crew of Truck Company No. /.
chopping holes for smoke-vents. The
majority chung to the parapet, and
hung there till rescued. Two went
down into the furnace from which the
flames shot up twenty feet when the
roof broke. One, Fireman Thomas |.
Dougherty, was Il wearer of the Ben
nett medal, too. His foreman answers
on parade-day, when his name is called,
that he "died on the field of duty"
These, ut all events, did not die in
vain. Stone columns are not now
used in supports for buildings in New
York.
So one might go on quoting the
perils of the tiremen as so many steps
forward for the better protection of
the rest of us. 1t was the burning of
the st. George flats, aud more re-
Gently of the Manhattan bank, in which
dozen men were disabled, that
stamped the average fre-proof con-
struction as faulty and largely delu-
sive. One might even 60 further, and
say that the tireman's risk increases
in the ratio of our progress or con-
venience. The water-tanks came with
the very high buildings, which in
themselves offer problems to the fire.
fighters that have not Yet been solved.
The very air shafts that were hailed
as the first advance in house
building added enormously to the fire.
mans work and risk, as well rs to the
risk of everyone dwelling under their
roofs by acting as somany huge chim-
neys that carried the fire to the open
windows opening upon them in every
story More than half OF all the fires
in New York occur in tenement.
houses. When the Tenement House
commission of 1894 sat in this city,
considering means Of making them
safer'and better, it received the most
practical help and advice from the fire.
men, especially from Chief Bresnan,
whose death occurred only a few days