The chief officer advised that the staff and appliances of the A and B stations, and also of the C and D stations, should be amalgamated, and thus a crew could be always on board and ready to proceed to a fire at a moment's notice. There would be four river-stations—viz., at Battersea, Blackfriars, Rotherhithe, and Deptford—from any of which a crew with appliances could steam at once. The value of the new arrangement is obvious. Moreover, the staff of the Blackfriars post are lodged in the large new fire-engine station at Whitefriars, opened July 21st, 1897, and which is not far from the north of Blackfriars Bridge.
As, therefore, the nineteenth century closes, we see the London Brigade, which has formed the model of so many others in the kingdom, straining every nerve, not only to maintain its high reputation, but to develop and to improve its elaborate organization and its numerous appliances for coping with its terrible enemy.
But, in the meantime, invention has been busy in other directions. Fire is so terrible a calamity, and its risks so great, that ingenuity has been taxed to the utmost to master it in every way; and not only to extinguish it, but to prevent it from occurring at all. Of a fire, indeed, it may be said that prevention is better than cure.
What think you of muslin that will not flame, of ceilings that will pour forth water by themselves, of glass bottles that break and choke the fire? What think you of chemical fire-engines, some so small as to be easily carried on a man's back? or of curtains and screens and fabrics that stubbornly refuse to yield?
All kinds of contrivances, in short, have been cleverly designed. Let us now see some in operation. Have you ever seen a fire choked in a minute? and how is it done?
CHAPTER XIII. CHEMICAL FIRE-ENGINES. FIRE-PROOFING, OR MUSLIN THAT WILL NOT FLAME.
Which structure will be first extinguished?
Imagine yourself gazing at two wooden sheds, both quite filled with combustible materials, and drenched with petroleum and tar. These are to be fired, and then one is to be extinguished by water, and the other by an extinctor, or chemical fire-engine.
"Ready!"