Photograph by Social Press Association 



FIGHTING THE BIG GRAIN FIRE AT DOW'S ELEVATOR, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 



High-pressure service in the downtown district in New York has all but banished the 

 modern big fire. Giant electric pumps, capable of delivering thirty thousand gallons of water 

 a minute, at a pressure of three hundred pounds to the square inch, represent the "big guns" 

 of the fire department. Under such pressure windows are smashed in, partitions are torn 

 down, merchandise is swept aside, and water is driven into every nook and cranny of a 

 structure afire. The ten pumps of the high-pressure service can deliver a hundred streams 

 at once. _ Veritable walls of water check a fire's effort to spread. Only a negligible number 

 of the city's forty fires a day get beyond the buildings in which they originate. 



5 



