Stop 31 – Fighting Fire Through Prevention

​

EDUCATION AND BUILDING CODES

The best fire is the one that never starts.

Building codes came first. In eighteen eighty-eight, the city passed a Fire Limits ordinance covering the business district. You needed the City Council's permission to put up a building, wooden buildings weren't allowed, chimney flues had to be brick, and electrical wiring had to meet the national code and pass the city inspector. Insurance companies paid a five-dollar yearly tax, and that money bought fire equipment. In nineteen twenty-nine, the city adopted a building code that covered private homes for the first time.

Fire safety education started in the nineteen-thirties. Fire Prevention Week, held every October, brought programs for children, along with inspections of every business in town. By the nineteen-nineties, the department had started Family Safety Night, inviting every third grader and their family to the firehouse for hands-on activities, dinner, and prizes.

EXTINGUISHERS AT WORK AND HOME

For centuries, the first line of defense in a business was a bucket of sand. By the late eighteen hundreds, new hand-held extinguishers were for sale for homes and businesses.

The soda-acid extinguisher held baking soda and water, with a bottle of acid at the top. You turned it upside down, the acid mixed in, and the gas it made pushed the water out.

Carbon tetrachloride extinguishers were common on electrical fires from the nineteen-thirties to the nineteen-sixties, until they were banned because the chemical gave off poisonous gas. If you ever find one at home, get rid of it safely. The ones in this case are empty.

Carbon dioxide extinguishers release gas so cold it comes out as "snow." And dry chemical extinguishers use a special baking soda powder, pushed out by compressed gas.