ALARM IN CASE OF FIRE.
They are under control of the office, and will be set going INSTANTLY, on the slightest alarm, and continue to ring.
This ringing, with the system of calling each room by watchmen stationed on the floors, will insure the speediest alarm to guests it is possible to give in case of accident.
On being awakened, guests and employés will protect themselves, each other, and property, to the greatest possible extent.
There are four red lanterns in each hall, at the corners, showing the Stairways, and at the End of every Corridor outside the building there are iron ladder fire-escapes to the ground.
Passage along the halls and corridors, if dark and filled with smoke, can be made by crawling close to the floor with the face covered, to prevent the inhalation of smoke and consequent suffocation.
From the Roof and the three stories below it there is access from the service stairs to the tops of the adjoining buildings, making a Way of Escape over the roofs, from Dearborn to State street,—a full block.
JOHN A. RICE & Co.
The fire service at Chicago is, no doubt, the finest and most complete organization in the world. Situated as the city is, on a vast plain, with prairie winds and lake winds that sweep the entire country for hundreds of miles without obstruction, the fire department has to consider, not only the question of extinguishing a conflagration, but protecting the property adjacent to a fire from ignition, in regard to which it has a series of wise precautionary measures. In former days Chicago, like many other American cities, was largely built of wood, and there are still outlying districts of timber houses. There are also enormous lumber-yards in Chicago, which are a source of danger during fires that rage when a high wind is blowing. Not long since Capt. Shaw gave an exhibition to a royal party in London, demonstrating how quickly the engines and fire-escapes can be signalled and despatched to a fire. So far as I remember the time was about fifteen minutes. In Chicago they take less than as many seconds to complete a similar operation. The system of fire-alarms in all American cities is superior to ours, and the arrangements for starting ensure far more expedition. We have a less number of fires in England, many conflagrations taking place in America through carelessness in connection with the furnaces that are used for heating the houses; then shingle roofs are not uncommon in America; and in England the party-walls that separate houses are, as a rule, thicker and higher. This was the explanation which the American consul gave me at Birmingham, England, recently, for the fact that during a whole year in Birmingham (with a population equal to Chicago) every fire that had occurred had been extinguished with a hand-engine and hose; it had not been necessary in a single case to use the steam-engines. In Chicago and other cities the electric signal announcing a fire at the same time releases the horses that are tethered close to the engines, alarms the reclining (sometimes sleeping) firemen in their bunks above, withdraws the bolts of trap-doors in the floor; and by the time the horses are in the shafts and harnessed the men drop from their bunks upon the engine. From a calm interior, occupied by an engine with its fire banked up, and one attendant officer, to a scene of bustle and excitement with an engine, fully equipped, dashing out into the street, is a transformation sufficiently theatrical in its effect to make the fortune of an Adelphi drama.
I once engaged to time the operation with a stopwatch, and before I was fairly ready to count the seconds the engine was in the street and away. These exhibitions of skill, speed, and mechanical contrivance can be seen every day at the quarters of the Fire Insurance Patrol. Chief Bulwinkle is one of the most obliging of officers, and many a famous English name has been inscribed in his visitor’s book.[59]