Thus headquarters knows exactly how the men are all engaged, and the character of the fire to which they may be called. Electric bells seem always clanging. Messages come clicking in as to the progress of extinguishing fires, or notifying fresh calls, or announcing the stoppage of a conflagration. And should an alarm clang at night, all the other bells are set a-ringing, so that no one can mistake what's afoot.
A list is compiled at headquarters of all these fires, the period of each list ranging from 6 a.m. to the same hour on the next morning. This list, with such details as can be supplied, is printed at once, and copies are in every insurance-office by about ten o'clock. The lists form, as it were, the log-book of the brigade. Some days the calls run up to seventeen or more, including false alarms; on other days they sink to a far fewer number; the average working out in 1898 to nearly ten calls daily.
The Log also shows the causes of fires, so far as can be ascertained; and the upsetting of paraffin-lamps bulks largely as a frequent cause. The overheating of flues and the airing of linen also play their destructive part as causes of fires. The airing of linen is, indeed, an old offender. Evelyn writes in his Diary, under date January 19th, 1686: "This night was burnt to the ground my Lord Montague's palace in Bloomsbury, than which for painting and furniture there was nothing more glorious in England. This happened by the negligence of a servant airing, as they call it, some of the goods by the fire in a moist season; indeed, so wet and mild a winter had scarce been seen in man's memory." And now, more than two hundred years later, the same cause is prevalent.
THE CHIEF'S OFFICE AT SOUTHWARK, METROPOLITAN FIRE-BRIGADE.
But the upsetting and exploding of lamps is now, perhaps, the chief cause, especially for small fires; and more deaths occur at small fires than at large. This is not surprising, when we remember that such lamps are generally used in sitting or bedrooms, where persons might quickly be wrapped in flames or overwhelmed with smoke.
Smoke, indeed, forms a great danger with which firemen themselves have to contend. At a fire in Agar Street, Strand, in November, 1892, a fireman was killed primarily through smoke. He was standing on a fire-escape, when a dense cloud burst forth and overpowered him. He lost his grasp, and, falling forty feet to the earth below, injured his head so severely that he died.
Again, several men nearly lost their lives through smoke at a fire about the same time at the London Docks. The firemen were in the building, when thick smoke, pouring up from some burning sacks, nearly choked them. Ever ready of resource, the men quickly used some hose they had with them as life-lines, and slipped from the windows by means of the hose to the ground below.
Nevertheless, dense smoke is not the greatest danger with which firemen are threatened. Their greatest peril comes from falling girders and walls, from tottering pieces of masonry, and burning fragments of buildings, shattered and shaken by the fierce heat. Helmets may be seen in the museum at headquarters showing fearful blows and deep indentations from falling fragments of masonry, and firemen would probably tell you that they suffer more from this cause than any other.
For small fires in rooms, little hand-pumps, kept in hose-carts, are most useful. They can be speedily brought to bear directly on the flames and prevent them from spreading. These little pumps can be taken anywhere; they are used with a bucket, which is kept full of water by assistants, who pour water into it from other buckets.