Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-12-30 | Page 15 | Bad Fires Caused by Lack of Calmness

BID FIRES CAUSED 01 Lid OF CHESS Salt Lake Department Compares Com-pares Favorably With Balance of Country. MODERN EQUIPMENT Statistics Indicate That Record of Efficiency Will Be Made in 1917. If you were to come homo unexpectedly unexpect-edly and fjnrt your house ablaze, would you get excited? Don't do it in fact, the hotter the fire the more reason why yuu should keep cool, although it may be very difficult to keep eoul in such close proximity to a hot fire According to officials "f thn Salt Lake fire department, considerable loss which could be avoided often results from fires by reason of the fact that people lose their wits when they discover dis-cover their homes burning. The successful suc-cessful fighting of fires and tho saving sav-ing of property from destruction depends de-pends largely on the speed with which the fire fighting apparatus is enabled to reach the scene of the conflagration, and no one is in a better position to hurry the department on its way than is the person turning in the alarm. Considerable difficulty is occasioned to the department especially by women who, when they call for the fire apparatus ap-paratus by telephone, fail to state tho location of the fire. Excited Woman. "It often happens," says Chief Bywater, ''as it did recently when a woman on the east side found a small bla;;e in her kitchen. Thoroughly excited, ex-cited, she called the alarm office on the telephone, and, being duly connected, con-nected, she yelled, 'Send the fire department, de-partment, our house is afire,1 and promptly hung up her receiver, without with-out telling us where her house was located lo-cated or where she was. As a result there was a. delay of several minutes while the alarm office was compelled to ask the telephone company where the firm alarm call had originated, and during each of those wasted minutes the fire was energetically devouring the contents of the excited lady's kitchen. This has happened repeated! repeat-ed! v." The accomplishments of the Salt Lake fire department compare favorably favor-ably with those of any other similar organization in the matter of the speed with which alarms are answered where the alarm is sent in such a way that no loss of time is entailed in finding out where the call came from. Nine-Second Work. It is said that on one occasion during dur-ing the past year the apparatus at the central fire station crossed the threshold thresh-old of the station door on its way out to a fire just niuo seconds after the alarm bell aroused the firemen, who were all asleep upstairs, it. being late at night. This means that the apparatus appa-ratus was well under way thirteen or fourteen seconds after the call came in, as it requires several seconds to transmit the alarm from the alarm office of-fice on the third, floor of the public safety building to the fire station below. be-low. That the firemen lose no time goes without saving when it is considered consid-ered that in that brief space of time thev must leave their beds, dress, slide down the brass pole and be in their places on the various trucks to which thev are attached. Figures relating to tho amount ot property involved in fires, insurance on such properly, losses covered by insurance in-surance and losses not so covered are onlv available for the first nine months of 1917, the. totals for October, November Novem-ber and December not having been compiled. The figures, as far a? they have beeu compiled, show that, property to the amount of $10,478,911 was involved and endangered by flames during Iho nine months indicated. The total amount of insurance carried on this propertv was $o,lS0,0R2. The total actual ac-tual losses during that period amounted amount-ed to $113,424, of which amount $9 ,972 was covered bv insurance, while $23,452 I represented propertv upon which no in- i surance was carried.