Year: 1872

The Cyclonic Character and Develop
ment or Great Confia grations-A New
Philosophy OF Their Management.


We present to-day the latest and most i'm
portant phase Of the late confagraton. based
on the reports of the Signal Service. A
fortnight has now passed away since the
great lire storm swept over Boston, and, as the
excitement and smoke have abated, we are just
becoming sufficiently calm to study the scien-
tinc lessons OF this confagration. The public
prints have been flooded with proposals for
averting similar calamities but, as yet,
scarcely solitary fact or suggestion not be-
fore entertained and well considered by fire.
men has been adduced. The only practical
value of the discussion of this sad and horrible
disaster has been the increased urgency with
which freproof structures have been recon-
mended.


Reference to the origin of the Boston con-
hagration shows that it was cyclonic When it
commenced, as the Signal Bureau weather
reports indicate, the atmosphere was tranquil
The wind was north of northwest, and was
then veering anti-cyclonically to north the
sky was clear and calm, and the fire eat its
way eastward from the meridian Of it's origin.
The first winds were not over eight miles an
hour, but as the immense flames developed
they became SO strong as to reach the height
of eighteen miles an hour on the
windward side, and on the leeward
side they increased to thirty-fve miles
in the opposite direction, finding pas
sage through the open streets and after
wards over the dilapidated and radiant masses
of stone and brick. The fire began in the
engine room and basement of fve-story
granite house, the flames ascending the eleva-
tor well to the roof, thus having an enclosed
funnel in which the heated Dir assumed
spiral motion as it assembled. The openings
in the lower part of the building and the
melting Of the water pipes furnished fresh air
and vapor enough to give such velocity to the
rising current as TO send it far up into the still
atmosphere above when the wooden elevator
walls were consumed and the granite walls
afforded fuller scope for the nascent meteor.
Thus protected till it was fully formed within
a single building it grew in intensity, and soon
bursting forth in its strength involved in its
gyrations the adjoining house, and continu-
ing to extend soon covered squares of ground
and became so ravenous for the oxygen of the
surrounding air as to produce an inaowing
gale, which in turn gave the intensity of the
blow pipe or blast furnace to the flames.


Such gyratory or cyclonic phenomena in
this and the Chicago confagration were well
attested. The telegraphic despatches-'ta
tornado of fire. ga whrlwind of fame"
&c.-were by no means merely figuratve.
In more sober terms, at Chicago, "a change of
wind, ''the wind has increased to gale"
'the wind has veered round to the north,'
''the wind seems TO blow hard and to be chang
ing towards the south, were the actual and
cerbatim telegrnms sent to us on the 9th, 10th
and 18th Of October, 1871, and to these unques-
tionable evidences of fire cyclone numerous
scientific reports attest the same fact. Pro-
fessor Espy has given some striking accounts
Of the artificial formation of storms and whirl-
winds by the combustion of large quantities of
brushwood and these he attributed, very
justly, to the formation of upper currents of





known factor in all rotatory storms, and the
Signal Service observer at Boston reported
smoke and steam carried up in spirals to a
great elevation He also mentions the fact
that thermometer exposed to the glare Of the
Ere, though two thousand feet from it and
dead to windward, rose five degrees Fahren-
heit It is impossible that such an intense
heat should not generate a cyclone Of fire,
within whose folds no human appliance could
be Of any avail, and whose ravening and roar
ing blaze would be inextinguishable by river
Of water.


If this be true we must seek for the security
against such direful confagrations in some
other way than by the multiplication Of water
supply and fire engines. which, when thor
oughly equipped, seem utterly powerless.
difficulty is, if possible, to destroy this revolv-
ing meteor, as the waterspout is destroyed at
sea; or if that cannot be done, to reduce its
force (by method we shall presently see),
and meantime to mass and intrench the whole
fire-fghting force on the leeward side OF the
CoHHHtBiapioHs


From these important and indubtable facts
and principles of atmospheric gyration several
clear propositions may be deduced. The
crumbling in and violent overthrow Of i'm
mense granite structures as 80 much ginger
bread work, SO noticeable in buildings like the
new Boston Post Office and the long piles of
mercantile stone edifces, are largely attribut-
able to the vorticose and whirling rotation
impaired by the fire storm to the surrounding
air; and they strongly remind one Of the
effects Of tornado in the West Indian
towns.


If this view of the cyclonic origin and extern
sion Of the conaagration holds good it follows
that, as soon as the fire companies reach the
scene of combustion and ascertain that its