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Show OBS Itid BIAMJ Uiz? For' masterly .Incompetency, the fire-fighters (save the mark!) who sprinkled the Atlas block conflagration con-flagration for four hours this morning deserve a leather medal. There was but one verdict voiced by the thousand or more spectators who watched the building - slowly burn, and that was embraced in the one word incompetency. The department was j slow enough in getting to the scene, but even slower in deciding what to do, and slowest in doing it Such work would have been a disgrace to a bucket brigade In a Chinese village. No attempt was made to get into the Atlas block at the beginning, and fight the fire' at close range; no ladders were put up against the wailsj.no pipeman ventured up to the line of flame on any side. When theT hose finally began to play, the water was thrown high into the air to fall as a spray a hundred feet from the blaze, thus adding the water gas to the fuel. Not until the . two-story Central block was well afire was a line carried to-the roof. ; Then there was another ridiculous ridicu-lous wait while the laddies yelled repeatedly for water. wa-ter. In the meanwhile the pipemen were industriously indus-triously washing the pavements and the front walls of tbe buildings. Fully two-thirds of all the water discharged went to waste. Investigation will disclose dis-close just where the blame iies,,but that blame there justly is no one who witnessed the scenes will deny. Had there been anything of a wind, the whole of the north side of the block would have been com sumed.. As it was. the fire had pretty much its own way, uninterrupted by the fire-fighters!). It was a most lamentable exhibition of failure, whether from lack of facilities, lack of men, lack1 of courage or lack of intelligence. The lesson is a costly one, but it has been well learned.' . |