Omaha daily bee., 1899-03-21
THE WINDSOR CALAMITY.

New York World; The lesson Of the fire
is the old one in such cases-the need Of an
inspection that inspects, of law officers whG
will enforce the law and OF a hotel manage.
ment that will not put UP with death-traps
New York Sun: The burning of the Wind
sor hotel, about the last of the great hotels
built non-freproof, seems to have been the
most rapid and deadly of all of its kind. 1t
is a fearful assurance of right building in
the future.
Chicago Times Herald: Civic authorities
must regulate the conditions under which
hotel keepers can open their doors to large
numbers of guests. Precautions against fire
should be enforced with increasing rigor in
proportion to the size and accommodations
Of the hotel. 1t often seems as though they
were relaxed as the possibilities of a holo-
Gaust increased.
st. Paul Globe: The Hotel Windsor holo-
caust will of course revive talk about fire
proof structures. But of what use are in
fammable edifces filled with the most in
hammable goods and decorations magma
BILE? If it teaches a lesson in simplicity of
ornamentatlOn, even to the extent of rigid
exclusion of combustible decorations in the
interior of hotels, apartment houses and
other human hives, a lesson that will be
needed, much good may result in the future,
Chicago Tribune: All the narrowing de-
tails of this catastrophe simply emphasize
the fact that the old style of construction
is full of danger and that buildings of this
sort should be provided with double the or
binary number of fire escapes on every wall.
No modern steel and terra Gotta structure
would burn and collapse with such fearful
swiftness. Even a skyscraper is better than
a seven-story ~fre-trap of this sort. The
sooner the steel freproof or mill construc-
ton methods are applied to all large hotels
the sooner we shall have the last of these
human sacrifices.
New York Times: The hotel was in no
sense f%ireproof or even 'slow-burning."
Fire, started by one of those accidents that
are accidents only in name, since they are
so likely to occur and so easily foreseen
in the light of ample experience, spread
through this crowded dwelling with such
r%apidity, and with the inevitable aCcompani-
ment of suffocating and terrifying smoke,
that a number Of the inmates were physically
or mentally incapable of escape, and a loss
of life followed greater than in any single
battle in the Philippines and far greater
than in all the naval engagements of the
Spanish war.
Philadelphia Press: What an appalling
tragedy would have attended this fire had it
broken out twelve hours later-at 8 in the
morning instead of 8 in the afternoon! Yet
for twenty-three years people have been
sleeping comfortably, luXuriously and calmly
in this, to the eye, splendid hotel without
the least suspicion that as far as safety goes
they might almost as we'll be sleeping over
a powder magazine. The Windsor hotel was
not a very old one, but it's style of structure
"a wooden interior in a brick francis, or
ought to be, obsolete for any large structure
intended to house human beings, either by
day or by night.
Philadelphia Times: This fire. in broad
daylight, was so sudden and so rapidly de-
structive that it inevitably suggests the old
smile of the finder box. The construction
of a modern hotel is at least approximately
f%reproof and with the f%ireDroof stairways,
eXtinguishers, electric signals and
countless other devices with which even the
older hotels that are under modern man
agenment are provided should be as secure
as any other buildings of corresponding size.
There is no reason, therefore, to generalize
upon the dangers of hotels. Yet, all the
same, an occurrence like this will make hotel
guests nervous for a time and landlords can
not be too thorough in their precautions
for their guests security,