REDUCING FIRE RISKS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 13, 14 January 1913, Page 4

REDUCING FIRE RISKS.

An interesting article appears in the London ‘Standard’ regarding the efforts now being made by inventors, architects, and business men to reduce the risk of fire to a minimum. American railway carriages are now being built entirely of steel, not only in the outer parts but all through the interior. It is found that these new all-steel cars do not in respect of comfort fall behind wooden English carriages. Steamships, an expert informed a representative of the ‘Standard,’ are now being made entirely of fireresisting materials. The Cunarder, Carmania, since her partial destruction by fire, has been rebuilt with partitions, doors, and fittings of steel. In city offices, furniture, such as bookcases, desks, counters, shelves, and even chairs, is being constructed of steel, faced in places to resemble wood. Offices are now being equipped in which the only inflammable material is the paper on which letters are written, and the clothes of the staff. The san.p expert predicts the speedy coming of a time when architects will provide suburban undetached residences with steel partitions which will bo effectual in confining outbreaks of fire to the place of their origin. The

houses of the future, according to Mr, Edwin Sachs, chairman of the British Fire Prevention Committee, will bo made of steel skeletons protected by concrete, with partitions of concrete, doors of metal, and roofs of waterproof materials. 1 ho present year, Mr. Sachs states, lias been a remarkable one in the number of inventions for fire-resisting purposes which it has produced. In one week alone two different systems of fire-resisting glazing, one fire-resisting door, and one. reinforced concrete floor were tested' by the Committee. One of the latest developments is an ingenious method of extinguishing petrol and celluloid fires, while a non-inflammable celluloid is being perfected to obviate the dangers of ordinary celluloid. When those new inventions come into general use, their effect on the statistics of fire losses should prove considerable.