FIREPROOF CONSTRUCTION.* Fire prevention and fire protection, of which latter fire-resisting construction is a part, are two divisions of the effort to reduce the danger and waste incident to hostile fire. The immense property loss alone from this cause and the *The text cuts are reproduced from J. IC. Preitag's 'Fire Prevention' by permission of J. Wiley and Sons, pub halm consequent significance of this effort are seen from the following figures of the annual fire losses in the United States: •Approximate.
Such losses far exceed the liabilities in com mercial failures in 1916, the normal expenditures of the War Department, the gold and silver production of the United States and the interest on the national debt. A street, lined on both sides with the buildings destroyed in one year, 1917, by fire, would reach from New York to Chicago. One hundred and forty acres of property and 1,343 buildings were destroyed in the Baltimore fire of 1904 and 3,000 acres and 25,000 buildings in the San Francisco earth quake and fire of 1906. That the greater por tion of this loss is unnecessary is shown by the fewer fires and the smaller fire loss per capita in European cities.
The universal construction of buildings de signed to prevent the radiation, absorption and transmission of fire would reduce the annual value destroyed by this agency to a mere shadow of its present size and produce a tremendous social benefit. Undoubtedly also such efforts would bring pecuniary profit to the individuals of the community in the majority of instances. A fireproof building in the real sense of the words must at present, however be viewed as an ideal rather than a reality. Important con flagrations have shown on the one hand the value of fire-resisting construction and on the other its limitations. Individual buildings of
this nature cannot stand unharmed by a con flagration in the midst of inferior construction and even isolated fires have damaged them in some instances to the extent of 75 per cent, where important defects in construction existed. The problem of fire-resisting construction is, therefore, one of degree; the solution involves a study of comparative values of types of design, kinds of materials and protective appliances.
A fire-resisting building may be defined as one which will confine a fire originating in the building to the unit of area of origination, will protect itself and its contents from adjacent fires, and will not transmit fire to buildings be yond. It, therefore, comprises far more than an agglomeration of non-combustible and fire defying materials.
The struggle to reduce the immense fire losses previously mentioned involves (1; fire prevention (see FIRE PREVENTION), or removal of causes and (2) fire protection or defense subsequent to ignition. (See Fnte PncrritcrioN). Fire protection, with one phase of which we are here concerned, includes (a) fire-resisting con struction and (b) protective devices for the automatic detection and instant extinguishment of fire.
Fire-Resisting Construction.— While popu lar attention has been primarily attracted to the materials used for fire resistance, because their significance is readily perceived, careful reflec tion will indicate two equally important divi sions: (1) material employed for fundamental structural parts, insulating and protective pur poses and the reduction of combustible finish;