Excerpt from The Armour Engineer, Vol. 14: November, 1922
The South Sea Islanders started something when they twisted a stick in a groove. Innumerable statistics have been published indicating the extent of our frightful fire waste. The figures are so staggering that average human intelligence can scarcely grasp them. In this educated and civilized country a human life is sacrificed to carelessness by fire every thirty minutes, and the victim is usually a child or a mother. The cost of our national ash heap is about one billion dollars per annum. We are gradually coming to a realization of the enormity of this crime, and find ourselves casting about for a remedy.
When the water pipes get out of order we call for a plumber, if in legal difficulty we solicit the services of a lawyer. It is logical, then, that finding ourselves in the grasp of the Fire Demon we should call for the aid of a diagnostician of fire causes - the fire insurance specialist. We are then advised that the causes of our difficulty are three in number. The natural causes are few - lightning, earthquake and tornado. The so called moral causes of fire may be divided into two classes, incendiarism and the result of indifference or deliberate carelessness. The physical causes of fire are many, but almost entirely preventable.
Most of our great conflagrations have been the result of extremely simple causes. Five of our large fires, where losses have ranged from one to forty million dollars, started from these elementary hazards: An electric iron, a locomotive spark, a cigarette dropped through a glass bull's-eye, an ignited ball of cotton, and the keeping of unslaked lime in a wet basement.
We may assume then, that as the causes of our fires are simple, the remedy should not be complex. The medicine which will cure us is composed of common sense and carefulness. It is largely a matter of education for those with an open mind, and one of coercion for the heedless. Europe has long since learned the value of carefulness. The average immigrant to this land from certain European countries fears the consequences of having a fire. Witness the case of one of our central western cities having a population of ten thousand, largely of foreign birth. Up to date there has not been a single fire alarm tins year! How many American born cities of ten thousand can say as much?
If education in fire carefulness has been successful in Europe is there any good reason why it should not be so here? The fact is that where we Americans have locally developed constructive and intelligent campaigns the results have been astounding. Cincinnati is saving itself some $50,000 per annum in fire insurance premiums. Detroit in 1921, in the face of a bad moral hazard and an increased population, reduced its fires by 508 and its false alarms by 122 over the year previous. Another city 40,000 has had seventy fewer fires so far this year than during the same period a year ago. The Chicago Safety Council reported that in connection with a recent Fire and Accident Week campaign, "The saving in fire loss for this one week alone represented over eleven times the total cost of the campaign." Still another sensible city listened to the advice of the fire doctor and eliminated seventy hazards in its public schools. It has been demonstrated that time and expense spent in practical fire prevention constitute capital well invested.
Contrary to popular opinion, it is quite reasonable for fire insurance interests to lend all possible assistance to fire prevention. The risks upon which profits are made are those which do not burn. No matter how high a rate may be, the company writing the line loses if the risk is destroyed. Most of the risks which the average company refuses to write carry high rates. Even the insurance man knows that when an article is burned its intrinsic value passes off into thin air in the form of heat energy, and that economically the country is po. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Armour Engineer, Vol. 14