The Savannah morning news., 1904-02-13

ing walls or suffocated in the acres
of burning territory in which men were
struggling for dear life in the last
few minutes? Our firemen have taken
enormous risks. Private citizens, try
ing to save property, have gone to
great lengths, and not until the ruins
are cleared viii it be known how many
lives have been lost A fire is a very
seductive foe. In the lumber yard
districts to-day one might often no
tice that those who were permitted
to so behind the lines would be lured
by their own interest in a peculiar
point of attack into remaining much
longer than was safe. Suddenly some
body would call attention to the APP
proach of flames from another direc-
ton and the way the group that had
collected would run for their lives was
a striking sight. 1t does not stand to
reason that in all of these brushes
the fire has been deprived of its prey
l expect to see quite a death roll
when the results of this disaster have
been tabulated.
81 have a terrible walk before me
to get home tonight, since the cars
have stopped running, such as 1 would
have in few other cities. Baltimore
has grown so rapidly, and its subur-
ban communities extend so far that
the prostration of its electric car lines
works peculiar havoc, l have wished
many times to-day that this were a
smaller city where / could live nearer
my work. But l suppose l must &C
cept this as one of the penalties en-
tailed by Baltimore's growth. In Chi
cago, l understand that much of the
pavement was of wood and so burned
up, too. You will notice that our pave
ment has been undisturbed by even
calamity of this magnitude, and the
showers of brick and stone that have
fallen upon it will leave 1t no more
irregular than 1t was yesterday. / tell
you, Baltimore Is a great city, and
never showed It more than to-day"
An experienced fire fighter who saw
the Chicago disaster tn41SI1 relates that
certain phenomena then observed, but
of the rarest occurrences, could be plain
ly noticed Sunday night. He says: "A
building would be aglow at the corner
of q block, but the rest of the line
perfectly dark and apparently safe for
the time being. Suddenly building
half a block away would be seen all
aglow inside, and almost with the
promptness with which electric lights
may be turned on in the different parts
of a theater, the buildings one after
another would blossom forth into this
brilliant glow and would soon be in
flames. The heat was so intense that
everything leaped into flame in the
entire region affected. This is the
trouble with big fires; their cumula-
tive force is not Offset by any CORE
spending increase in the efficiency of
re-tighting apparatus. Twenty en-
gines will throw only twice the water
of ten. Twenty buildings in flame, on
the other hand, will produce conditions
four times as favorable for the spread
of combustion as ten buildings, and
perhaps forty times as favorable. Ger
tain it is that a great fire outruns the
fighting apparatus Of the world, and
it is only by checking a fire in its be-
ginnings that the worst results can
be avoided"
On Thursday last Mr.. Robert Gar
rett of Baltimore transferred what is
probably the finest collection of en-
cravings in America, from the Mercan-
tile Trust building Of Baltimore to the
Library of Congress, to which he had
made arrangements to loan them for
exhibition. The Mercantile Trust
building was burned Sunday night, and
the engravings would have gone with
it.. f. K. l..