Popular Science Monfhh/ 



869 



ly safe from the flames whose prog- 

 ress in that direction is arrested. 

 The principle involved is similar 

 to that of the cyclone cellar of the 

 western home, or the collision 

 bulkhead of the ocean steamer. 

 The fire wall develops a "bi-sec- 

 tional building," offering a hori- 

 zontal instead of a vertical escape, 

 making the fire drill unnecessary-. 



There is nothing new about the 

 fire wall. It already exists in 

 buildings every^vhere, in one form 

 or another, and its value as a fire 

 stop to protect property has long 

 been known. Its availability as a 

 fire-escape has not, however, been 

 recognized, and it is this feature 

 which Mr. Porter has advanced as 

 affording the only means of safe 

 escape from fire to the occupants 

 of crowded floors. He has shown 

 that the idea is as applicable 

 to department stores, schools, 

 theaters, hotels, hospitals and resi- 

 dences as to factories. 



Besides being a safe and effec- 

 tive means of protecting life, the 

 fire wall is equally desirable from 

 the standpoint of preventing large 

 property losses, and for that rea- 

 son it is advocated by the insur- 

 ance and underwriting interests. 

 In one hundred and fifty-nine 

 buildings, fire walls were fourfd in 

 thirty-five, and 

 where used and 

 understood, 

 engendered a 

 feeling of se- 

 curity and 

 safety. Mr. 

 Porter recom- 

 mends that fire 

 walls be com- 

 p u 1 sor y in 



every future factory building over seven 

 stories or eighty-five feet in height which is 

 occupied by more than fifty persons above 

 the first floor. 



In no direction is the necessity for the 

 sectional building greater than in the 

 hospital field. It seems incredible, but it 

 is nevertheless true, that hospitals, asy- 

 lums, and similar institutions housing bed 

 patients, cripples, the blind, the insane, 

 and infants, have too few attendants to 

 help them. Thus, in case of fire, these 

 helpless inmates must inevitably perish. 



Diagram showing how fire walls are utilized in New York 

 city hospital buildings. Heavy lines indicate the fire walls 



Fire in a loft building equipped with the fire wall. 

 The occupants pass through the doors of the fire 

 wall and are immediately out of reach of the flames 



In the section- 

 alized hospital, 

 the attendants 

 are called from 

 wherever they 

 may be to the 

 endan gered 

 section. Here 

 they wheel the 

 bed patients in 

 their beds and 

 assist the others the short distance neces- 

 sary to the adjoining sections where, with 

 a minimum of disturbance and of time, 

 they are rendered perfectly safe. Mr. Por- 

 ter has introduced this system in all the 

 hospital and institutional buildings of the 

 Department of Public Charities of New 

 York city, and in others elsewhere. He 

 has offered his services free through the 

 Mayor's Committee on Defense of New 

 York city, to plan and supervise the sec- 

 tionalizing of any hospital which tenders its 

 facilities to the nation in the present crisis. 



