FIRE PREVENTION
By Edward F. Croker. Dodd. Mead & Co. 354 pp.
Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.
Fire Prevention, by Edward F. Croker, formerly chief of the New York Fire Department for almost twelve years, is a presentation of the principal safeguards against loss by fire. In it ex-Chief Croker tells in a readable way what, from his long experience as a fire fighter, he considers the most effective ways to extinguish fires.
Most of all he emphasizes the necessity of preventing fires. “If I had my way about it,” he says, “I would not permit a piece of wood as big as a man’s finger to be used in the construction of any building in the United States which had a ground area larger than twenty-five by fifty feet and was more than three stories in height.” He calls attention also, to a point which has been emphasized many times when he declares that “it is not so much the buildings which should receive added protection but the contents and the inmates of them. We must add to the term ‘fire-proof,’ the terms ‘death-proof’ and ‘conflagration proof.’”
Perhaps to a lay reader to whom some of the intricacies of steel construction, high pressure, and fire-fighting apparatus are not plain, the most interesting chapters are those which deal with housekeeping whether in the home, store or workshop.
In his chapter on Prevention of Fire in the Dwelling, Mr. Croker gives a number of simple suggestions which would prevent most of the thousands and thousands of fires in the 11,000,000 wooden buildings in this country and save a financial loss which in two years equals the cost of the Panama Canal. Concerning these suggestions there can be little disagreement, although those which he makes for additional laws may not win as unanimous support.
James P. Heaton.