The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-12-26
JINGLE SANS BONFIRE.

Samuel Hopkins Adams, in January
EverybOdy's, gives some amazing fact:
and figures on the destruction of prop
erty by fire in this country every year
In ten years we have had a million
fires in this country-an average OF
100000 a year.
Our fires cost us $500, 100000 a year.
Berlin and Chicago are about of a
size. Berlin pays its fire department;
$4,000 a year. and sees $3.50 oou so UP
in smoke. Chicago's departmental bill
is $S,OS7,5 sos; its bill for fire loss runs
to s5,OOO,0O0 annually.
Yearly we pay in to the fire insurance
companies some s195,000, 000- Except In
catastrophe year like 1906. where a
CONFUSION of nature upsets all caIcu-
lations, we receive back about $95.0oo. :
900. leaving a comfortable little margin
of $1OO, 100000 as profit ard the cost OF
doing business.
Fire rates in the United States are
twelve times heavier than in Great
Britain and twenty times heavier than
in Italy. On the average we pay too
much for insurance, even on the basis
of our highly infiammable communities.
There are some II, 500. 900 buildings in
this country, valued at s14,600, ooo, oo0,
About 5000 of these are fireproof, II
that elastic term be charftaDiy
stretched to cover multitude of sins.
The other II ,5s2. 900 are at the mercy OF
a defective fiue, fire in the adjoining
edifice or the high financier with the
Insurance policy in his breast pocket
and the kerosene can in his strong
right hand.
When everybody is talking OF con-
servation of national resources and
such figures as these are produced, II
looks as though one good way to con-
serve resources would be to begin with
the buildings we live in and DO bus;-
ness. The chief fault. of course, is in
the laxity of building laws or in their
enforcement. Instead of saving loss
by compelling decently safe construc-
ton, the American people put their
millions into fire protection. water sys-
TENS and expensive fire departments.
II is as though a nation threatened
with a plague of disease spent eno=-
nous sums on preparation for funerals
and paid no attention to the simplest
measures of preventive medicine
Nor is this showing of Mr. Adams
without its significance in Salt Lake
and other Utah cities. We have had
no extraordinary fire losses IN years
it is true, but that has been due to good
fortune. The building laws. parJlcu-
larry in the business district, are by no
means conducive TO safety from loss
either in their terms or in their inter
has spent. and is still spending, big
sums of money for the improvement of
water facilities, but it is
making no radical changes in its build
ing laws such as the size of the city
and the rapid growth would seem TO
demand. With it's broad streets. its
splendid water supply, and an efficient
fire department, Salt Lake could easily
have a very low rate of insurance IF It
would insist on high-class construction
ordinances and have good men to see
that they are enforced property. IN
stead, it is paying high rate, higher
even than conditions justify, and 1t is
apparently content to let conditions re- !
Of the long-continued penalty IL must /
suffer for its negligence in times to
come.