Bisbee daily review., 1909-05-11
LOSS FROM FIRE GREATER IN
 1903
Although Each Year Shows Much Effort Toward a Bet
 torment of Conditions 1908 Losses a Record Breaker.

WASHINGTON, D. C., May 10.-
 Federal experts who are making a
 study of building materials that win
 best withstand fire and who are there
 fore taking keen interest in the fire losses as they are reported for the entire country declare that in spite of all efforts toward better building conditions, the death and destruction due to fires during the past year 1909 will eclipse all previous records ! with the exception of the years in which the Baltimore and San Fran cisco fires occurred.
 They point to the fact that in six teen days in April, five big fires in different parts of the United States | resulted in loss of $6,000,000 the death of twenty persons. the injury of | seventeen, and the rendering home
 less of more than 5000. The great
 est of these fires was at Fort Worth Texas. resulting in a property loss of
 between s3,O00.00O and s4,OO0. .O0a, ' and the second in Importance was at Rochester, N. Y., with a loss of talf a million dollars.
 
 have not yet learned the lesson of
 the Baltimore and San Francisco fires" said Richard l.. Humphrey, en- gineer in charge of the structural ma
 terial laboratories of the United States geological survey Fort
 Worth's recent experience when
 more than 300 homes were devoured by the flames is but a repetition of what has happened in the past and what will occur in the future until American municipalities wake to the situation and enact legislation which will absolutely prevent the further construction of buildings that are not fire proof
 Tt seems difficult to make the peo- { pie believe that in 1907, fires in the United States cost more than mil lion and a quarter dollars for every day in the year. an annual tax of more than s5 for every man, woman and child in the country We are spending a billion dollars a year on new buildings and construction work ! while our fires cost half billion dol 1 lars.
 No other nation has such an un- enviable record as this. Our fires are | costing from six to eight times as 1. much per capita as any country in | Europe. By the total cost of fires. 1 I refer not only to the actual destruc- , ton of property, which amounted to | s225, 900 900, but also to the cost of maintenance of fire departments and ! the amount of insurance paid over and above the money returned to re | imburse owners of buildings. While we are wasting several l times as much property per capita as 1 Europe, we are also destroying in these fires five times as many lives
 as are lost in other countries. In 1906, according to the United States , census. 5000 persons died of burns l and perhaps 10000 were seriously in. | iured.
 No other country suffers so enor-
 nous confiagration losses as does the
 United States and it is this class of loss, due to the rapidity with which ! fires spread. involving whole blocks and cities, that require attention. In | spite of the most efficient fire depart ments in the world for which Amer | ican cities are celebrated, and in spite of an abundant water supply. all | human efforts are powerless when | once a fire gets under considerable heddWay where lnnanindDfe aEu iimsy building construction prevails, with the result that in every city and village in the United States there Is | ever present the possibility of large loss of life and property.
 "The federal government is directly | interested in this question because It | is the owner of buildings valued at
 more than half a billion dollars which I tC tnv a | than $20.000,G00 each year for new structures. This building and con struction work is all intended to be
 of a permanent nature. It involves
 interests of such magnitude that the | government can afford 10 take no risks concerning either the methods
 of construction, or the materials to De