THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 614.841 M33d Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. A charge is made on all overdue books. U. of I. Library MAY -2 35 OCT 141SSC 9324-S Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates \ https://archive.org/details/dangerschemistryOOmari Dangers and Chemistry of Fire For Grammar Schools PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF VERNON M. RIEGEL SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION By CLARENCE MARIS, B. Sc., M. D. Late Pyrologist to the State Fire Marshal of Ohio f*tw? w nunon mm Columbus, Ohio: The F. J. Heer Printing Co. COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY CLARENCE MARIS THE TEACHING OF DANGERS FROM FIRE The 84th General Assembly of Ohio amended the law relating to fire lessons and fire drills in schools to read as follows : Sec. 12901. The state fire marshal and the superintendent of public instruction are hereby empowered and directed jointly to provide a course of study in fire prevention for use in the public, private or parochial schools of the state, dealing with the protection of lives and property against loss or damage as a result of preventable fire. It shall be the duty of each board of education or the board or persons in control of such schools to compel the use of such course- of study in each school under their control. Whoever, being a teacher or instructor in a public, private or parochial school, wilfully neglects to devote at least fifteen minutes in each week during which such school is in session to instructing the pupils thereof as to the dangers of fire, shall be guilty of a misde- meanor and fined not less than five dollars nor more than twenty dollars. Sec. 12902. On and after September first, one thousand nine hun- dred and twenty-one, it shall be the duty of each teacher in the public, private or parochial schools in the state to use such course of study in fire prevention in the classes under his control. There shall be placed in the hands of each teacher above mentioned, prior to September first, one thousand nine hundred and twenty -one, by the superintendent of public instruction, through the county superintendent of schools, a book for the purpose of the instruction of pupils provided in the next two preceding sections. Such book shall be conveniently arranged in a sufficient number of chapters or lessons to provide a different one thereof for each week of the maximum school year. Sec. 12904. The provisions of sections 12900, 12901 and 12902, General Code, shall not apply to colleges and universities. Sec. 12905. Boards of education having control of the schools of a rural, village or city school district shall cause a copy of sections 12900 and 1 2901, General Code, to be printed in the manual or handbook pre- pared for the guidance of teachers, where such manual is in use. FIRE DRILLS IN SCHOOLS REQUIRED BY LAW Sec. 12900. Whoever, being a principal or person in charge of a public or private school or educational institution having an average daily attendance of fifty or more pupils, or the person in charge of any chil- dren’s home or orphanage housing twenty or more minor persons, wil- fully neglects to instruct and train such children by means of drills or rapid dismissals at least once a month while such school, institution or children’s home is in operation, so that such children in a sudden emer- gency may leave the building in the shortest possible time and without confusion, or, in the case of schools, wilfully neglects to keep the doors and exits of such building unlocked during school hours, shall be fined not less than five dollars nor more than twenty dollars for each offense. The State Fire Marshal shall have authority to order the immediate installation of necessary fire gongs or signals in such schools, institutions or children’s homes and enforce the further provisions of this section. ( 2 ) L I M 33cL J) o Cu jjfi J 'O V LESSON NO. i. Carelessness With Matches. BURNS BUILDINGS AND CHILDREN. Using matches carelessly sets fire to more than 500 buildings, and burns to death as many as 30 children, in Ohio, every year. In one building in every ten burned down the fire is started by the careless handling of matches. In large cities it is one in every seven. The matches we have are much nicer and cheaper than those used a few years ago. Our grandfathers had for matches pine blocks an inch square and one and a half inches long, which were split part way down so a splinter could be pulled off. The free end of the splinters had been dipped in a mixture with sulphur in it. These matches when struck gave the bad, choking fumes of sulphur. On that account they were called “Lucifer” matches. Then the “parlor” match came into use. It was called the “parlor” match because it was fit for use where there was “company.” The railroads will not carry parlor matches now, so not many of them are sold. When the parlor match, which no one should use, is trod upon or otherwise lighted it sounds its own fire alarm — this is the only good thing about it. The matches now in common use are not poisonous. KEEPING FIRE. Our grandfathers’ grandfathers had no matches. They kept fire from day to day and week to week through the year in the open fireplaces by covering live coals or brands with ashes. If the coals died, as they some- times did, the children were sent to a neighbor’s to get some. If there were no neighbor near the father would spread some flaxen tow on the hearth and pour a little powder over it from his hunter’s horn. Then he would take a piece of flint and strike it with a piece of steel while holding both over the tow. A spark from the flint would explode the powder and that would light the tow. The flint commonly used was an Indian arrow- head. THE AFTER-GLOW. The dangers from carelessness with the matches we use are many. When scratched the stick may break and the flaming head fly. When these heads fall they often set fire to waste paper, sweepings, lace cur- tains and the clothing of women and children. The smoker, and often the mother, too, after using a match gives it a toss without looking to see if it is still blazing, or where it may fall. ( 3 ) 534202 4 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE No box. of matches should be bought that has not printed on it the words ’'‘Impregnated” or “Treated to prevent after-glow.” This means that the stick has been dipped in a liquid which keeps it from remaining a live coal after the match is used. The stick if not so dipped will be a red hot coal which will start a fire if thrown upon anything easily lighted. Look at the words on tins box ! All good matches are double tipped and impregnated. WICKED CARELESSNESS. Careless persons leave matches lying about although one of them may be lighted by the sun’s rays coming through a bubble in window glass, a fish globe or through a water bottle, a round paper weight or grandma’s spectacles. Loose in drawers or on desks they may take fire from rub- bing or a blow. On the mantel they may be ignited by the heat from the grate or stove. Many fires which destroy buildings start from flying heads dropping into trash. More fires caused by carelessness with matches start in the cellar than in any other part of the house. But, never a week passes in Ohio, without a house burning by the use of a match, for a moment, to light a closet. Many fires are started by flying, burning match heads getting on bed covers, lace curtains, carpets and clothing. THE HEAD OF THE MATCH. The head of a match contains phosphorus, chlorate of potash, rosin, whiting and powdered glass held together by glue. It takes but little heat to start a fire in phosphorus. The heat caused by rubbing the par- ticles of glass, or flint, in the head when it is struck, fires the phosphorus compound. The chlorate lets go of the oxygen in it with sputtering and great heat. This fires the rosin in the head and the paraffin with which the stick has been soaked.. Then the stick begins to burn. THE DOUBLE TIPPED MATCH. This is the kind of match used most. The ends of the sticks are dipped in a soft mixture made up of sulphide of antimony, chlorate of potash, whiting, glue and a powder to give it color. Then, after drying, it is dipped a little way into a mixture that has phosphorus in it and is of another color. The phosphorus compound does not have to be rubbed hard to make it burn. So this match is easy to light. A short scratch of the tip on cloth will set it afire. This makes the smokers, who use most of the matches, like it. When rubbed lightly by things that are moved over them or by a foot on the floor they do not light because the “tip” is not touched. But if the head of one of these matches is crushed under a foot it takes fire. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 5 The houses burned in a year in Ohio by the careless use of matches cost more than half a million dollars. But this loss is not so bad as the loss of lives from it. In many countries of Europe the use of these matches is forbidden by law. At Flushing, Ohio, a five year old child burned to death, and three houses, valued at $9,000, were destroyed by fire, which was started by children playing with matches. Two men were injured in rescue work. Children, do not carry matches in your pockets. If you are careless you may lose dear little brother, or sister and maybe papa or mama, or the home you love so much. LESSON NO 2. The “Safety” Match. AND THE MATCH MACHINE. The “Strike-on-the-Box” match which can be lighted only on the box in which it is sold is the only match now known, which is fit to have in a home. It is made from the same wood and with the same match machinery as the double tip match. The paste into which it is, dipped to form the head is the same except that phosphorus is left out and a salt of lead put in. The important things in both are chlorate of potash, rosin, whiting and powdered flint or glass. The phosphorus needed to light this match is mixed with peroxide of lead, fine sand and gum arabic and spread upon the box. RUBBED UPON THE BOX. When the match tip is rubbed upon the surface the red phosphorus starts the chlorate and rosin to burning, although the phosphorus itself does not take fire. Its head is not poisonous. Because they have no phosphorus in them safety matches are never lighted by a blow or crush. They do not light from any common heat. Being useless without the box they are not left lying about for children to play with. If a rat takes one home, as he sometimes does, to file down his rapidly growing eye teeth on the powdered flint or glass in it, he cannot set it afire. The strike-on-the-box matches are called “safety matches” but they are not safe. They are called so by the makers because they are less dangerous than other kinds. Mothers thinking the boxes safe are not so careful to keep them away from little folk as they should be. 6 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE They can be lighted by a long stroke on any hard, smooth surface. Or: some of the boxes the phosphorus paint is smeared over the end so the matches may be fired when the box is first opened. The worst matches of this kind are those from Japan. Children try to do everything they see men or women do. A toddler will get a box of safety matches and sitting down will try to strike them on the box while holding it on his cotton dress, or, getting a double tipped match, he will strike it on the floor. Many children a year and a half to three years old have been burned to death by firing their clothes in this way. Boys four or five years old often carry matches. If they knew the danger from it they would not do so. Matches that can be struck anywhere should be kept in iron or stone boxes kept near the place at which they are to be used so one will not pick out several and carry them to the stove or gas jet, use one, and lay the others down near by. The 107 million people in America use as many matches as the 800 million in the rest of the world. They light 500,000 every minute and any one of them might burn a house or cost a life. RATS AND MICE WITH MATCHES. There is danger in leaving “strike-anywhere” matches where rats can get them. Some time ago the manager of a big match factory kept several rats in a cage with plenty of matches to eat until they were nearly starved to death but no match-head was eaten. It is most likely that the fires that have been seen starting in the nests of mice and rats have been caused by grease from their food taking fire, for lard or butter, when spread on fine material such as nests are made from, may take fire itself. Match heads have been found in nests mice have made from finely split match sticks. THE MATCH MACHINE. The machine is a frame 63 feet long by 15 feet high, in which moves an endless belt nearly two feet wide, made up of steel slats which travel around 24 wheels arranged in two rows one above the other. These slats are four inches wide and in them are holes into which the upper ends of the matches are driven as they are cut from the block of wood. The blocks of white pine wood are carried under the belt and a row of dies DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 7 descends, cutting off a row of 48 matches. The cutters are big tape needles the eyes of which have sharp edges which cut the match. A plate rising below drives the upper end of each stick one-twelfth of an inch into a hole in the belt directly over it. This makes the collar seen at the naked end of each match. So, the matches sticking down from the belt close together make it look like a traveling hair brush. The ends of the sticks traveling in the slowly moving belt pass through the liquid to prevent after-glow, then through paraffin which makes the stick take fire easily; then the mixture which adds the bulb and last the phosphorus tip is put on. Between each dipping the travel- ing matches are dried by electrical fans. At the end of an hour they are punched out of the plates and fall into the match boxes. The machine makes from four to seven million matches a day. Any one of these matches used carelessly may take a life or burn a building. LESSON NO. 3. Death From Playing With Matches. IGNITING COTTON CLOTHING. About forty women and children are burned to death in Ohio each year by having their clothing set afire by matches. Of these, who suffer death in this its most horrible form, thirty are children playing with matches which had been left lying about, and six are women whose clothing has been fired by flying match heads. Several mothers die each year from having their clothing set afire while trying to save the lives of their burning children. In one year, in Ohio, the number of buildings fired by children p'ay- ing with matches was 204. While thinking of the suffering and death of so many children who played with matches, the loss of the buildings seems hardly worth speaking of. But a large number of persons will have to do a lot of hard work to rebuild the houses which the children changed to smoke and ashes. Every year at least 100 children in Ohio are dangerously burned and many of them disfigured for life by these playthings. Never play with a match! TYPICAL STORIES OF DEATHS. Here are stories from newspapers : “Rose Teleck died yesterday from burns. The child found some matches while her mother was away and in playing with them set her dress afire.” B DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIR E “Alice Heffron tried to light the gasoline stove and the head of the match flew off. She sat down, failing to notice that the small firebrand had nestled in the folds of a cotton cloth hanging on the chair. Her clothing took fire, burning her so horribly that she died at midnight.” “Chiles Reed, four years old, died from burns. The little fellow’s clothing was discovered in flames. Just before he died, he said : ‘Mamma, I don’t want any more matches.’ ” “Mrs. Mary Andrews, who had formed the habit of striking matches upon the sole of her shoe, was fatally burned. When the match was struck its head snapped and part of it catching in her muslin clothing set it ablaze. In a moment she was wrapped in flame. Her death came from breathing the flame.” Whether it is ladylike or not the habit of lighting matches on the shoe sole is dangerous to women, either big or little. COTTON CLOTHING. The touch of a flame quickly sets fire to any kind of clothing made of cotton, such as muslin, calico and flannelette. These are used in the clothes of children and women. To the 36 dead from their clothes being lighted by matches add 16 by stoves, 32 by grates and 31 children playing with fire. This shows 1 15 dead in one year in Ohio from cotton clothing having taken, fire. To lessen the number of these painful accidents, each grate or fire- place should have in front of it a wire screen such as is used in many homes to keep the baby from falling into the fire. The natural gas stove should be a closed one or have bars across its face. Every fire makes an upward draft of air from the room. This draft will pull to the flame any light material which comes near. Most of the burns from open fires come from the dresses or aprons of women and children being drawn into the flame. Stoves when red hot may set fire to dresses and aprons which touch them. A stove properly fed will do its work without getting red hot. CAMP FIRES. Girl Scouts tending an open camp fire or cooking over it should wear woolen skirts because of the great danger from cotton skirts taking fire. If a child’s clothing takes fire it should be thrown down and rolled in a woolen shawl or bed or lounge cover or a portiere or a coat. If not held it will run screaming. The running will fan the flames and the screaming will draw flames into its lungs. Not long ago an eight-year-old boy who heeded this lesson saved the lif£ of his baby sister who was a year and a half old, by catching her when her dress took fire and rolling her in an overcoat. Some time DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 9 afterwards he was looked for and found crying from burns on his hands. Could you do so brave a thing? LESSON 4 The Coal Oil or Kerosene Lamp. THE CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. Many children are badly burned and some burned to death by the blowing up or by the overturning of coal oil lamps. When a lamp explodes, or is dropped or knocked over and broken, burning oil is splashed about and the clothes of persons within reach of this liquid fire begin to burn upon their bodies. The petroleum from which kerosene is made is pumped from deep wells and through many miles of pipe to the refinery. In the refinery it is cooked to form vapor or gas. The vapor given off first, when cooled by passing through pipes under water, is gasoline, and that given off afterwards is kerosene or coal oil. In this way three quarts of kerosene can be made from one gallon of the petroleum. The material left after this heating is made into paraffin, vaseline, and 123 other things which can be sold. The natural gas now used in 505 Ohio towns is like this vapor of petroleum. It comes from very deep wells. THE COAL OIL LAMP. All the facts of the chemistry of fire, and of explosion as well, can be told in a simple story of what occurs in the light of a coal oil lamp. When the lamp burns the oil slowly disappears, being changed to gases which cannot be seen. The kerosene is drawn rapidly to the top of a wick. When a match flame is touched to the oil in the wick’s top its heat loosens the atoms of carbon and hydrogen, of which the oil is made and permits them to unite with atoms of oxygen of the air for which they have a greater liking than they have for each other, causing them to burn. ATOMS THAT ARE GREEDY. Each carbon atom is so greedy that it seizes two atoms of oxygen from the air to form carbonic acid, while each pair of hydrogen atoms takes one of oxygen to form water. The carbonic acid, which is a gas, and the water in the form of a vapor are carried out of the top of the chimney. IO DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE Gunpowder and dynamite do not need air to burn them because they already contain oxygen. Having oxygen of their own they can be set afire by a spark and exploded while shut in a gun or cannon. The force of an explosion is caused by the solid matter being quickly changed to gas which takes up hundreds of times more space. THE PURPOSE OF THE LAMP CHIMNEY. The chimney of a lamp forces the current of fresh air caused by the rising of the heated air within it, to pass close to the flame, so that it can be robbed of its oxygen. This movement of air is called draft. Light is made by the little pieces of carbon becoming white hot before they are burnt up. The hottest flames make the least light. Do not try to blow out a lamp while the flame is high. Doing so may break the chimney or force the flame down into the lamp bowl and cause it to blow up. Turn the wick down until the blaze is half its usual size and then blow over the chimney’s top; not down it. To turn the blaze quite low and blow into the burner is most dangerous. If the top of the wick is above the top of the tube when the lamp is rot lighted, oil will be drawn up and will run down over the lamp. Always turn the wick down below the top of the wick-tube after blowing out the flame. HOW DOES A LAMP EXPLODE? The heating of the brass in the burner may warm the oil until it gives off a vapor. It is so thin one cannot see it in the lamp globe. If the wick is too small to fill the tube the flame will flash down to this vapor and the lamp will blow up. It will blow up if this vapor passes through a hole in the lamp’s collar and reaches the flame. The screen in the burner must be kept open so the flame can breathe. If the chimney is not clear down on the burner, the lamp smokes be- cause the flame gets too much air. When a lamp is turned too high it smokes because there is too much fuel for the air supply. The brass in the burner and collar should be kept clean and bright so that the heat will pass off. The soot from a lamp that is not given good care fills the pores in the brass and holds the heat. Only dirty burners heat lamps so as to make them explode. When a burner can not be rubbed bright it should be thrown away because it is dangerous. A lamp should not be set in the sun or close to a fire, or near the edge of a table, or hung to the ceiling over a table on which a lamp is used. The sewing machine is a poor place for a lamp. Lamps of metal are safer than those made of glass, which would break if thrown to the floor by baby pulling the table cover. Glass lamps may be broken by children playing ball, or by frisky dogs. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE II Squatty lamps are safest. The hanging lamp has so narrow a bot- tom that it should not be used on a table. A lighted lamp should, not be left alone. Using a rolled strip of paper to carry a blaze from the fire-place to the lamp-wick is more dangerous than lighting it with a match. FILLING THE LAMP. When a lamp that has been burning needs to be filled, do not take off the burner near another light or a fire. The vapor in the bowl of the lamp may spread until it reaches a blaze and explodes. Flaming oil is then thrown over every one who is near. Above all, remember that filling a lamp without first putting out the flame is very dangerous. When two-thirds of the oil in a lamp has been used it should be filled again. Once each week the oil left in a lamp should be poured back into the can through a piece of cloth on a funnel to remove dirt which has settled to the bottom of the lamp bowl. THE WICK. The char or burned end should be removed from the wick every day by rubbing it off, not by cutting it with scissors. When a wick is half burned up a new one should be put in. A lamp cared for in this way will give a bright, white light and will not blacken the burner or explode. The burners for round wicks are safer than those for flat ones. Air containing one-eighth oil vapor will blow up, if it touches a flame. In Ohio a house is fired each week by the exploding or upsetting of a coal oil lamp. The number of persons burned to death each year by lamp explosions in Ohio is from 12 to 16. Candles while lighted should always be in a metal candle-stick. Many fires are caused by workmen placing them on wood and allowing them to burn clear down. In spite of the use of electricity and gas for lights more candles are made each year. If a candle is set too near a stove it will slowly bend until its blaze touches the wood upon which the candle-stick is resting. Grandmother made the candles from tallow at butchering time; now they are made from petroleum paraffin. 12 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE LESSON 5 Kindling a Coal Fire. DANGER IN KEROSENE FOR THAT USE. The use of coal oil in starting a fire in a stove or grate is a most dangerous practice. What is happening while a fire is being kindled? if a shaving or bit of. paper is held above a lamp flame it will first turn brown and then, suddenly, a gas, which has been roasted out of it, will flash. This flash adds enough heat to make the shaving or paper bum to ashes. It requires less heat to light a small or thin piece of wood than it does to ignite coal — so “kindling wood” is used in starting fire in the stove or grate. BEGINNING WITH A MATCH. We begin by heating the little piece of wood in a match so that it will flame. The match head has powdered flint or glass in it which gets hot enough when rubbed to make the prosphorus in it take fire. The phosphorus lights the chlorate of potash in the match head, making heat great enough to fire a shaving or a piece of paper; either of these, in burning, will heat kindling in contact with it to the burning point, and the flame of the kindling will fire the coal. A pound of coal gives off as much heat as three pounds of dry wood. The water in green wood weighs half as much as the wood itself. So, to start green wood burning, more heat must be furnished to drive out the water by chang- ing it to steam. Glowing coals readily light shavings or paper if they are blown upon. Blowing forces more air past the coal and the more air it gets the more oxygen it has to sustain the blaze necessary to make it hotter. A coal hot enough to make a bright light has a temperature of about 900 degrees, or is more than nine times as hot as the hottest summer weather. OIL HEATING STOVES. The oil heater is dangerous because it can be moved about; it is easily overturned and may be set against wood or something which takes fire easily and fire it. Kerosene is not so dangerous as gasoline but when warmed it does give off a vapor, like that of gasoline, which may blow up when mixed with air and ignited. Many fires have been caused by filling oil stoves while the wick is burning. dangers and chemistry of fire 13 All filling should be done by daylight and away from open fires or lights. Another common fire cause is that from the placing of heaters where they may come against curtains or other things that take fire easily. DO NOT CARRY WHILE LIGHTED. In many cases, trouble has come from weak spring catches which let the lighted heater open like a jackknife while it is being moved. It should not b.e moved at all while lighted. Explosions have been caused by wicks which do not entirely fill the wick tube of the burner, leaving an opening between the flame and the space above the oil. Then the vapor comes in contact with the burning wick and flashes back to the oil. Then, if there be much vapor above the oil it will only puff out the flame ; but if there is little vapor above the oil it will explode, shattering the stove. The right way to put out one of these kerosene heaters is to turn the wick down a little way and blow over the top of the burner. It is dangerous to blow the flame out from under it or turn the wick very low. The greatest danger from the kerosene cook stove is from the heat of the burners causing the oil to swell and part a seam in the can which holds it. STARTING A FIRE WITH COAL OIL. Coal oil, or kerosene as it is properly called, starts a fire in a hurry because it gives off six times as much heat as wood in burning and can be lighted by a match. But it can not be used safely even in a stove that is cold. If the iron of the stove is warm or there are hot coals in the ashes the coal oil poured on is turned to vapor. This vapor forms a mixture with air which is a powerful explosive. If there is a tiny blaze in the stove, or a red coal in the ashes, it blows up at once. If there is neither blaze nor hot coal, and the stove is warm, the explosion does not occur until the fire builder strikes a match. Every week some newspaper has a story much like one of these: “Mrs. Wood on returning from church last evening found the house cold. She made an effort to revive the fire by pouring coal oil on the dying embers. An explosion followed and, paralyzed by fear, she stood helpless while angry tongues of flame consumed her clothing. Friends found her unconscious and in two hours she died.” “Mrs. Litz, expecting her husband home any minute, was in a hurry to start a fire. She filled the stove with wood and poured coal oil on it. An explosion occurred and Mrs. Litz, her clothing and hair aflame, rushed about the front yard for several minutes screaming from terrible agony and then fell dying. Her child of six months was consumed in the building.” 14 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE BURNED TO DEATH. The average number of people burned to death in Ohio in a year, from using coal oil to quicken a fire, is twelve. The number badly burned is three times as large. In many accounts of persons being burned to death from pouring coal oil into a stove it is said the can exploded. This is never true. When the explosion takes place the can is sure to be dropped by the per- son pouring oil from it and the oil in the can being splashed about adds to the fire. The opinion that the oil in the can explodes depends upon the fact that it is hard to believe so terrible an explosion could have come from the amount of oil poured into the stove, and aside from this, those who search the ruins find the seams of the can opened by the heat of the fire melting the solder in them. The use of gasoline to start a fire is deadly. LESSON NO. 6. Fire a Servant, Not a Friend. THE MEANING OF FIRE PREVENTION DAY. Years ago the city of Chicago was in flames. The streets were full of frightened people who saw their homes and places of business being destroyed. Many were burned to death; many more were injured for life. Several miles of the city were turned into blackened ruins. It was one of the most terrible events in the history of the country ; yet it started from a single tiny flame which might have seemed too small to do any harm. There is a story that this flame was the light in a lamp that was set upon a stable floor and kicked over by a cow. Whatever may be the truth of this story, it is certain that the little flame grew quickly into such a great blaze that the country will never forget the Chicago fire. Now we call the ninth of October Fire Prevention Day for that was the day the great fire started. There is an old and true saying that “fire is a good servant, but a hard master.” Fire cooks our food; it makes our houses warm in winter ; it raises steam for the boilers that drive our engines ; it serves man in many useful ways. Fire is so necessary that we must always have it about us, but — remember this — we must always consider it our servant and never as our friend. Why? Because it can't be trusted. There is no flame anywhere so small that it will not break out of bounds at the first chance. However small and harmless looking, it is anxious to spread and destroy. If careless people forget its danger and give it DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 15 the chance for which it is always ready, it may become a terrible, raging fire within a very few minutes. Now here are four points which I wish to impress upon you. 1. That Fire, the servant, may become Fire the master and the destroyer at any moment, when it is trusted too far; so people must never take chances with it. 2. That there is a fire every minute in the United States. Even now, while we are together here, fire is bringing sorrow and suffering to many people. 3. That nearly all of these fires would never happen if people were careful. 4. That children may easily learn how to make their homes and their families safe from this danger. We no longer 1 think that we are doing our full duty when we merely fight the fires that start ; we know that we should not let them start. Nearly every fire is a disgrace to some one. Every time you hear the fire bells, every time you see the smoke rolling up in the sky from some burning building, every time you read of a fire in the papers, you are pretty safe in saying to yourself: “Some one has been very careless; that fire should not have happened.” Are we ourselves trying to be careful? Let us realize that we have our own part to play in this matter. Why, even the few of us who are gathered in this room can start this very day to make this a safer town to live in. We can learn how to turn in alarms. We can resolve not to carry matches or to play with fire. We can help to clean up rubbish, because a clean town has few fires. We can keep matches out of the reach of little children. We can learn to see unsafe things in our homes and in those of other people. Boys and girls have sharper eyes than older people ; they can see many things which older people have not yet noticed. In many towns they have been of great help to the fire department by telling of dangers they have found. Nobody knows how many lives and houses they have saved from fire. We all love our town and wish to become good and helpful citizens. So, remember this, for it is the greatest lesson of Fire Prevention Day: A careless person can NEVER be a really good citizen ; he will always be a danger to himself and to those about him. WHAT BOY SCOUTS CAN DO. It is said in the Scout Handbook for Boys that “it is the duty of the Scout to know how to prevent fires.” The organization has prepared a course in “firemanship”, making it possible for its students to qualify for “merit badges” and giving information of real value. All over the country, troops are today helping fire departments by looking for fire i6 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE dangers and in telling persons what the dangers are. The Boy Scouts have helped to clean up vacant lots and other places full of rubbish that would take fire easily. They have carried questions from house to house, have photographed blocked fire escapes, theatre or store exits and the like. They have carried on public drills and exhibitions. All scout- masters are urged to get in touch with local fire departments and schools. The Grand Rapids, Michigan, News printed this: “I am Carelessness,” I am more powerful than the combined armies of the world. I am more deadly than bullets, and I have wrecked more homes than the mightiest of siege guns. I steal in the United States alone over $300,000,000 each year. I spare no one, and find my victims among the rich and poor alike, the young and old, the strong and the weak ; widows and orphans know me. I massacre thousands upon thousands of wage-earners in a year. I lurk in unseen places, and do most of my work silently. You are warned against me, but heed me not. I am restless. I am everywhere ; in the home, on the street, in the factory, at railroad crossings, and on the sea. I bring sickness, degradation and death, and yet few seek to avoid me. I destroy, crush and maim ; I give nothing, but take all. I am your worst enemy. I am Carelessness. LESSON NO. 7. Stoves for Cooking and Heating. HOW TO LESSEN DANGERS FROM THEM. By putting too much wood or coal in the stove at a time, the people of Ohio have lost every year about one-third of a million dollars from buildings being set afire. All of this loss was from putting in so much fuel that the stoves were made red hot. But if the walls behind the stoves and the floor under them had been covered with tin or zinc the building might not have been burned. When a roaring fire is made, small pieces of burning fuel are likely to be carried up the chimney, and fall on the roof and set it DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 17 afire. Or it may set fire to soot in the chimney and fire the roof in tip same way. After closing the door of a stove, so that a strong draft will pass through the stove and quicken the fire, never leave the room and remain away long. A number of fires come from the drying of wood in the oven, kindling left to dry over night beside the stove, or lath exposed where plaster has been knocked off, or goods on the clothes-horse or chair back, and especially clothing previously cleaned with gasoline, placed by the stove to dry. Sometimes fires are caused by matches, ornaments and the like upon the mantel, as the result of over-heating stoves or pipes. SCORCHING THE WALL. If the wood of the wall or floor turns brown, charcoal is beginning to form. Wood heated until it becomes charcoal will take fire if it is again made as hot as it was at the time the charcoal was formed. When grease or water gets into charcoal it may take fire without being heated at all. A stove must not be placed nearer a wooden, or lath and plaster, wall or partition than one and a half feet and if it is that close, the wall or partition must be protected by a sheet of tin, zinc or sheet iron. This metal must have room behind it for a draft of air to keep it cool. A good way is to hang the metal sheet loosely on screw hooks. All stoves should have iron legs. The pipe is often the hottest part of the stove; therefore, the metal to protect the wall should be run a yard above the stove. Bright tin turns away heat better than any other cheap metal. If the elbow of a pipe is within a foot of the ceiling, sheet-metal should be placed above it. Liquid polish should be used only when the stove is cold, because most of the kinds sold have gasoline in them, the vapor from which ignites with explosive force. PROTECTING THE FLOOR. A wooden floor under a stove must have on it a sheet of zinc or other bright metal extending a foot in front of the ash pan, and if wood is the fuel used, the metal shoud extend that distance out under the stove door. It is proper to put a layer of asbestos board under it for it may have to catch some very hot coals and the wood under the zinc may char and then take fire. A parlor or bed-room stove should always have metal under it, and if the wall is nearer than a foot and a half it should be protected by sheet metal or asbestos board. i8 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE \ m \ When covering a coal fire to keep it over night, remember that the k»ft coal used in Ohio swells one-third while burning; so hot coals are likely to fall out of the open door or over the grate bar. STOVE EXPLOSIONS. When a fire is covered by slack coal it makes a thick smoke which may explode when a blaze starts. The blaze sets fire to gas and to the fine pieces of carbon which make smoke black. It was a smoke explo- sion that spread the fire that burned down the business part of Balti- more a few years ago. Most of the explosions come from covering a fire with fine coal to keep it over night. At Lindsey, Ohio, a stove was blown into 140 pieces from this cause, some of the scraps passing through windows and doors. Many fires result from grease or fat boiling over on cook stoves. Don’t throw water on it for that makes the blaze worse by spreading it. Use ashes, baking soda or salt to smother it. MANY BURNED TO DEATH. The number of women and children burned to death from their clothing taking fire from touching the kitchen stove is very large. The calico skirt of a woman or the muslin of a child’s dress will blaze up if it touches iron that is heated only to a dark red. Stories like this are often seen in the newspapers : “Iris, the eight-year-old daughter of Harvey Rizor, was burned to death Sunday. Her clothing caught fire from the stove. Her mother tried to save her and was severely burned.” The state fire marshal, to whom is sent the facts of every fire, often gets a report in which the cause is said to be “Overheated stove”. A sound stove set at the right distance from a properly protected floor and wall, even if red hot, cannot fire the house. But many persons use stoves with cracks in them rather than put a new piece in the place of the broken one. From these cracks sparks escape and coals fall to the floor. In this way the house is set afire. LESSON NO. 8. Open Fire Places and Grates. MANY ARE BURNED BY THEM. In the time of our grandparents the open fireplace with its andiron, swinging crane and broad hearth of stone could be seen in every farm- house. No newer method of providing heat is half so nice. The pot DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 19 was boiled and the turkey roasted swinging from the crane and the bread baked in covered skillets with hot coals under and over them. This home hearth-stone is seldom seen now, because four-inch wood and a back-log a foot thick are too costly. Its dangers were from sparks being drawn up to fall upon the roof and from hot coals being snapped out into the room. GRATES FOR COAL. A common fault of persons using coal grates is allowing the clinkers to stay in the bottom of them. This keeps the burning coal so near the top of the grate that it is likely to fall out. The soft coal we use swells while burning so that the lumps are one-third larger than when cold. So, if the grate is filled full of coal some of it may roll into the room. Three-quarters of the heat from grate fires is lost up the chimney. “Mrs. Hannah Hatfield was so seriously burned that she died. She was standing near an open grate, ironing, when her dress caught fire by a lump of coal rolling off the fire. She was alone and rushed into the yard and rolled on the ground to extinguish the flames.” THE HEARTH. The brick or stone hearth in front of a grate should be at least two feet wide. The use of a sheet-iron blower to force the draft of air through the kindling and fuel to start a fire is liable to make the draft of air so strong that it will carry sparks and red-hot pieces of kindling out upon the roof. This is a common way of burning houses. While a blower is on, the chimney top should be watched by some one. A newspaper used for blowing is likely to take fire and burn things on the mantel. A big fire in a grate often fires mantel coverings. Excessive heat may set fire to matches on the mantel. “While Stella Allison was dusting the mantel-piece her apron was drawn into the grate and ignited. Instantly she was enveloped by fire. The flame was put out by rolling her in bedclothes, but she died in agony in a few hours.” The rolling of hot coals from the top of the grate or through holes from bars being broken out is the most common cause of houses being burned from grates. Coal sometimes snaps and flies into the room be- cause natural gas in it explodes. This happens in coal not yet hot enough to fire a carpet if it does jump out. 20 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE TO PROTECT BABY. Every open grate should have a wire fender in front of it. If it has not, toddling children may fall into it or older ones may get so close to the grate that their clothes take fire. “The four-year-old daughter of James Fuller was pushed into the grate by her six-year-old brother while playing, and burned so badly she died.” Many deaths come from the dresses of children, and women, too, being fired by the draft of the flue drawing them against grates or natural gas stoves. “In passing too near a gas grate in her home in Newburg, the clothing of Harriet Green, four-year-old daughter of the city solicitor of that town, caught fire and she was fatally burned.” “Laura Akers, fourteen, was roasted alive and fell dead in the street after running from house to house with her clothing aflame, crying for help. When the girl was building a fire in the grate her apron took fire.” TO PROTECT AGAINST RANGES. If a kitchen range is placed within a foot and a half of any wooden wall or partition, the wood should be protected by a sheet of iron or tin reaching from the floor to a yard above the range. A range placed four inches from a wall of lath and plaster may heat a lath so hot it will take fire, although the plaster over it is not broken or cracked. All ranges which have no legs and which have no ash pans must have brick under them and under the brick must be cement or sheet-iron. All lath and plaster of wood ceilings over all large ranges, and ranges in hotels and restaurants, should be guarded by metal hoods having ventilating pipes. These pipes should be covered with asbestos cloth and should not pass through a floor. LESSON NO. 9. Fires from Chimneys. PUTTING OUT BURNING SOOT. A flue is a tube through which the smoke from a stove, grate or furnace passes from a fire to the open air above a building. A chimney 01* brick, stone, or concrete forms the part of the flue which is in or "**side the wall. A stovepipe is the tube of sheet-iron which forms the part ai the flue from a stove to a chimney. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 21 Woodwork too close to a flue is likely to take fire A crack in a flue will let sparks pass out into the room and they may set fire to the house. Openings in flues cause two or more fires in houses every day in Ohio. To rebuild them costs about half a million dollars a year. Nearly all this money would be saved if the chimneys and stovepipes were looked at once a week and faults found in them were fixed. It is most important that they be examined and fixed when the cold weather, which makes need for hot fires, comes on. The night on which the first “killing frost” is most likely to come is that of October 18. That is the time when it becomes so cold that potted plants will shrivel and die if left out of doors. Before this night the chimney should be examined for cracks and the soot in it brushed down and removed. Stovepipes should be taken down and cleaned. If natural gas is used, there is little soot to take away, but there is crumbled mortar at the bottom of the chimney, which is liable to choke the small stovepipe. The mortar between the bricks crumbles out be- cause of the acid fumes in the smoke. If the pipe should get full of crumbled mortar, persons sleeping in the room might be choked to death by gas. WHY CHIMNEYS CRACK. Holes in flues may be caused in many ways. The settling of its foundation or the crumbling of soft brick or poor mortar may make a crack in a chimney through which sparks can pass to the dry woodwork near by. The common way of building a brick chimney, upon joists, is bad, because of the danger of the chimney cracking from the twisting of the joists. Chimneys so built often have as their base a plank whose only protection from sparks and heat is a layer of mortar on it. Many fires result from this practice. Sometimes a chimney in settling forms a crack because one side of it is held up by the floor or roof timbers. Nails driven into brick chimneys are likely to come out, leaving holes. A joist-end should not rest in a chimney wall, because it might take fire. Tile chimneys of all sorts are unsafe because they are very likely to crack off at the level of the roof where cold air strikes them. A hood on a chimney top should make np offset to hold soot. A number of fires come from sparks or burning soot passing through a bad joint between the pipe and chimney. Fires from defective chim- neys, usually being in the attic, get a good start in the dryest of wood before the alarm is raised. Attics being difficult to get into with a water bucket, the fire is likely to get beyond control. A chimney wall should be as thick as the length of a brick. The open- ing in the chimney should be one-tenth the size of the fireplace it serves. 22 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE Chimneys should always be built from a solid foundation in the cellar and with a well-fitted iron door at the bottom through which soot can be cleaned out. BURNING OUT SOOT. Soot, being a mass of fine grains of carbon, makes a hot fire. When masses of it in a chimney take fire, the strong current of air rushing in from below, to supply the oxygen needed to unite with the carbon to form carbonic acid gas, makes a draft powerful enough to carry the burning material out through the chimney-top and to spread its glow- ing particles over the roof. A piece of paper if thrown into a grate may be drawn up while blazing and set fire to soot or the roof. For putting out soot fires nothing which is easy to get is so good as common sault if plenty of it is thrown upon the fire. It produces a gas, in which nothing can burn. Many of our parents have seen it tried during the burning out of the big mud and sitck chimney of the old home. If sulphur is at hand, use it, rather than salt, for the burning of sulphur produces a gas which puts out the fire by greedily taking up all the oxygen in the chimney. A fire may be put out in this way even after the woodwork around the chimney has been lighted. The firing of a pistol up the chimney will bring down the burning soot and put an end to the fire 1 in the chimney, but may ignite something in the room below. Bad flues burn more homes than any other fire cause. NOTE: — Some of the facts in this lesson are directed particularly to the teachers in frame school houses. LESSON NO. 10. Stovepipes and Smoke. HOW TO FEED A STOVE. A stovepipe becoming red-hot and firing the wall behind it is a common cause of the burning of a building. A good cleaning of pipes not only shows loose joints, rust holes and open seams but increases the heat they give out. Soot holds heat better than a feather-bed — one-fifth better. A large part of the heat from a fire in a stove comes out through the pipe because the iron in it is so thin. In the parlor this heat is much greater if the pipe is not lined with soot. It has been found that soot is the best covering for steam pipes to prevent loss of heat from them. An elbow in a stovepipe lessens the dangers of pieces of kindling or fuel being drawn from the chimney top and lighting still red-hot on DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 23 the shingles. If such sparks are given elbow room they are likely to bump in making the turn and fall back harmless. While a fire is burning the air in a chimney travels up at the rate of three to six feet a second. WHY DOES A FLUE DRAW? When air is warmed it swells just as wood swells when wet. It then takes up more space than the cold air around it. So, it is lighter than before and the heavier cold air forces it up to float above it, just as the cork of a fishing line is forced to the top of water when a fish lets go after pulling it under. A pipe must not be pushed into a flue far enough to choke it. A stovepipe hole in the chimney should not be stopped by putting paper or rags in it, or be covered with wall paper. It should be filled with bricks and mortar. A plug of tin, such as is often used for this purpose, will get dangerously hot if soot behind it takes fire and then the house will be set afire. Pipes that are not exactly the same size must not be put together. Crimping a piece of pipe to make it small enough to fit leaves openings for sparks. A stovepipe should not be passed through a roof or wall — even in a summer kitchen. Sparks from it may light the shingles covering the house, or the rubbish or birds’ nests in the eaves. If a pipe must pass through a wooden or lath and plaster partition it should have around it a double collar of tin, zinc or sheet iron in which there is a space of at least one inch through which cool air can pass. CLEAN THE PIPE. Every fall all stovepipes must be thoroughly cleaned. Jarring the soot out or mopping it is not enough. A scraper must be used inside it to remove scales which might soon fall out leaving flaws in the pipe through which sparks might fly out instead of up. “A fly and a flea In a pipe were imprisoned. ‘Let us flee!’ said the fly, ‘Let us fly!’ said the flea; So they flew through a flaw in the flue.” SMOKE. Smoke seen coming from a chimney shows that fuel is being wasted. If a fire in a stove has just enough air and room enough in which to use it, the smoke is nothing but carbonic acid gas, vapor and water, neither of which can be seen. Smoke that can be seen is made black by small bits of soot which are unburned carbon from the coal or wood. This means a waste of money and fuel. 24 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE THE GASES. The carbon is but a small part. of the waste due to imperfect burn- ing. Its being there shows that part of the gases roasted out of the fuel are not being burned. The burning of these gases adds greatly to the heat of the fire. If the fire were given air enough the soot and gases would burn. To get all the heat from coal, it must be fed to the fire in shovel- fuls — not in bucketfuls. If too much is put on at once much of the soot goes out into the air to poison plants and soil our faces and clothes. The gas given off in the burning of any fuel with just enough air, is a plant food. If the burning is not perfect, from lack of air, the smoke contains sulphur which is a plant poison. Covering a fire entirely with coal prevents the needed air passing through it. The smoke from factories which poisons the air in cities, puts grime on the wall paper and smudge on the tablecloth, makes a heavy cost on health and money to city people. It is a loss to the owner of the factory, too. If he should have a proper furnace under the boiler in his factory, he would save money in fuel. Within a few years city laws will stop the smoke waste because it affects our health and also increases bills for washing. When smoke appears in the school room or there is a cry of “fire” wait for the teacher to tell you what to do. You may lose your life if you do not. One hundred and sixty-four children lost their lives in the burning schoolhouse at Collinwpod, near Cleveland. They didn’t mind their teachers in the fire drill. In their fright they piled up against the door. Many of them did not suffer from being burned, because the gases from the flames put them to sleep before the fire reached them. LESSON NO. ii. Sparks and Playing with Fire. WHAT IS A SPARK? A spark is a small piece of red hot carbon, a glowing bit of char- coal, which escapes from any substance that is burning. It escapes because the force of the upward draft, made by hot air, is strong enough to carry light bodies up with it. The length of time it stays hot enough to set anything afire depends upon its size. The smaller it is the sooner it cools. The number of sparks from burning sticks of different kinds of wood varies greatly. Hickory gives off the greatest number and buckeye the least. There is more danger from sparks in burning shavings than sticks, because the draft of a flue is so likely to carry pieces of shavings Dangers and chemistry of fire 25 up where they may drop on the roof before they are entirely burned. Soft coal makes fewer sparks than wood and anthracite coal makes almost none. A GREAT LOSS OF MONEY. More than one-third of Ohio’s loss of money by fire is from flying sparks. Every year 2,000 buildings are set afire by them. Over half of these buildings were fired by sparks which got out through chimney tops, cracks in chimneys and open joints in stovepipes. The greatest number was from sparks drawn up through chimney tops falling on shingle roofs. A fortune will come to a boy who invents a screen or other thing which will stop sparks from flying out of chimney tops without spoiling the draft of the flue. It is a good practice to paint shingle roofs. Paint not only makes them less likely to rot but prevents the forming of fuzz on them. This fuzz being a very fine kindling, is easily lighted by a spark. The fuzz which forms on beams and boards in factories, stables, outhouses and fences is likely to take fire from flying sparks. The danger can be re- moved by giving them a coat of whitewash. Whitewash holds down the fuzz under a layer of slaked lime, which will not burn easily, and in put- ting on the whitewash, cobwebs, which often catch sparks are brushed away. It is better still to use shingles made of material which will not burn. These last longer than wooden shingles, too, and cost less in the end. BURNING BIRDS’ NESTS. A number of fires have been caused from sparks lighting in birds’ nests in the eaves of houses and in openings made to let air into store- houses and mills. In Cleveland sparks caught in a bird’s nest two hun- dred feet deep in a church tower. Birds’ nests are made from the very finest dry stuff the bird can find and the English sparrows now build nests in nearly every opening in or near the tops of city buildings. This makes it best to cover all such openings with screens of woven wire. Not long ago a large mill and elevator was seen to take fire from a spark falling in a sparrow’s nest. It burned to the ground. Ohio having colder winters than England, from whence the spar- rows came, they use here a greater amount of material in their nests to keep them warm. So when one of them gets afire the boards under them are sure to be lighted. In cities, every spring, all sparrows’ nests about buildings should be found and torn down. If there are eggs in them to break so much the better. The house sparrow — or English sparrow, as it is commonly called, is of no known use and it drives away the song birds which, besides the pleasure they give us by their music, are of great value to the farmer, because they live by eating the insects which destroy grain, fruit and vegetables. 26 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE BURNING RUBBISH. Sparks start a few fires in rubbish, leaves and dead grass and many buildings are destroyed by sparks from burning piles of rubbish, to get rid of them, at the time of spring house-cleaning. The best plan is not to have any spring house-cleaning. Keep the house clean all the year round. A spark may be hot enough to explode gasoline vapor or acetylene gas. Any spark will light thin paper, rags, cotton, grease, tar or lace curtains. More fires are started in rubbish heaps by sparks than by care- lessness with matches or cigar stubs. Do not allow rubbish heaps to collect. They are never necessary. PLAYING WITH FIRE. In the autumn there are fires started by sparks from burning piles of leaves in city streets. Leaves should be hauled away. Burning them on the street injures the pavement, frightens horses and sometimes sets fire to the clothing of children. For a child to make a bonfire of a pile of any kind of rubbish is always dangerous because sparks from it may set fire to houses or stables near by. It is dangerous to the child, too, for his clothes are likely to get afire while playing about a bonfire for he likes to poke it and jump over it. In a newspaper is this story of a little girl : “The child, together with a group of friends, was- playing about the bonfire when her clothes caught fire and she was completely covered by a mass of flames. Her screams brought her mother, who ran to her aid and succeeded in putting out the flames, but not until the child’s body was terribly burned from head to foot. She was hurried to the hospital, where she suffered until death came in the evening.” If girls play near open grates their skirts or aprons are likely to be drawn to the fire and lighted. While playing “little old woman,” a Springfield girl of six got upon a chair to reach a penny on the mantel. The long apron she wore was drawn into the fire. Before she could get down from the chair her clothes were flaming. A lady hearing her screams came and quickly wrapped a rug around her. But it was too late, the burns were so deep that she soon died. Playing with powder or kerosene is very dangerous. A boy found a shell made for use in a shotgun, opened it and put the powder it held into a bottle. To see it explode, he dropped a lighted match into it, and his face was badly burned. Children who play with fire nearly always burn their homes or them- selves. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 27 Locomotive sparks fire many buildings in cities where there is great danger of a conflagration. The fire losses that railway companies are forced to pay on account of sparks are very large. The inventor of a good spark arrester for locomotives will be made rich. The sparks are thrown out when the engine coughs “choo, choo.” LESSON NO. 12. Dangers from Leaking Gas. HOW IT MAY BE EXPLODED. If a boy who smells gas in the cellar looks for the leak in a gas pipe with a lighted match or a lamp or candle he is sure to find it. After- ward other persons will find him dead from the explosion caused by the flame from the light he used. When a flame touches a mass of gas it burns so quickly that it makes a great heat. The sudden forming of a great quantity of gas forces the walls of the house apart. It is this sudden swelling of the gases in powder which drives the bullet from a gun. The noise is made by the movement of the gas throwing the air into waves. Very quick burning makes what we call “explosion.” When a smell of gas is noticed anywhere in the house, doors and windows should be thrown open and all gas keys closed. The leak should then be hunted with nose and fingers — never with a light. The gas usually comes through a leak-hole with force enough to be felt. It is likely to be where two ends of pipe come together; at an opening in the seam of the pipe or at a sand hole in a cast iron elbow. If there is fire in a stove or a lighted jet in a room next the one in which gas is noticed, do not open the door between, because the gas would be drawn to the fire in the stove and exploded. THE NOSE AS A POLICEMAN. If the leak cannot be found by using the nose as a gas policeman, a plumber must be called to shut off the gas outside the house. A small hole may be plugged for a little while with a splinter of soft wood. A crack may be stopped by wrapping with a bandage smeared with soap. If a hole is so small it can’t be found with the fingers, wet the pipe with soapsuds, then the leak will blow a bubble for you. With doors and windows open a small leak will do no harm if there is no flame the gas can reach. Air holding less than one-twentieth part of gas will not burn. A mixture of one-twelfth part of gas and eleven- twelfths air will explode if it touches a blaze. 2 8 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE Every one should be afraid of all kinds of gases used for making light or for cooking, for they are always trying to get out of the pipes. If gas does find an opening it is likely to smother people to death while they sleep and on reaching a blaze, take fire and burn up their bodies. A DANGEROUS ENEMY. It is bad enough to have in our homes such an enemy to life as natural gas or coal gas when held in iron pipes. To have it in rubber tubes, such as are often used to carry it to stoves or hot plates, is much worse. Such a tube may crack off at the end. If it does so while the gas stove is burning, the fir'e goes out, but if the stove burner is very hot the escaping gas will be lighted at the end which has dropped to the floor. They may be pulled off in moving the stove or be knocked off in many ways. A mother, after being out of the room for a few minutes, returned and found her little girl lying smothered by gas from one of these tubes, which had pulled off while the child was playing with it. COMMON ACCIDENTS. Many accidents come from the keys in gas pipes near stoves being turned and. left open after the flame has been extinguished. A woman in a room in which there was no fire or light caught her skirt on a key, shook it off, and passed out without seeing that the key had been turned open. The escaping gas reached a burning gas fire in an adjoining room and exploded, blowing out a wall of the house. Children at play open these keys, men kick them, and housewives turn them open by dragging the dishrag over them, or by hitting them with crockery and by striking them with the broom while sweeping. In new houses, the pipes are under the floor and there is a key-hole. This makes the danger less if the key is not left in the hole, but it often is. The key should be hung on a nail above the hole. A gaslight bracket should not be used to hang things on because the key may be caught and turned open in removing them. A WORSE DANGER. The worst danger in cel’ars is from gas which has leaked from the main pipes under the street. This gas cannot get up through the pave- ment, so it sometimes comes into the cellar through the loose earth around the pipe which runs into the house. It is most dangerous because it has no smell. The earth through which it has passed has taken from it the oils which give it the smell which warns one that it is there. Being lighter than air it floats next the cellar ceiling. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 29 One-sixth of all the gas put into the main pipes is lost by leaking. The cost to the gas company for digging down and fixing small leaks in the street pipes would be more than the gas lost is worth. LESSON NO. 13. Gas Lights. SMOTHERED BY GAS. Two kinds of gases are used for light. Water gas is made by carbonizing soft coal in iron retorts by forcing steam through it and adding petroleum drop by drop. In Ohio, and seven other states where natural gas can be had, it is used for light in mantel burners. It costs one-half as much as the other kind of gas, so it is cheap enough to use for warming and cooking. COAL GAS. When coal is roasted in an oven, coke, tar, ammonia liquor and lighting gases come out of it. These gases are passed from the oven through holes in the bottom of a large iron pipe which lies on the ground. This pipe is half filled with water, in which most of the tar and ammonia settle. The gases are then passed through a number of tall iron pipes to cool them. Then they go up through a tower filled with coke, down which water trickles. This is the ‘scrubber” in which the rest of the ammonia and other gases are taken out. It then goes into the large gas holder which presses it into the street pipes. Analine dyes, which are used for coloring Easter eggs, are made from the tar from the gas factory. Coal gas is used in less than one- quarter of the towns in this state. Natural gas comes from very deep wells just as the petroleum does from which coal oil is made. Ohio uses more natural gas than any other .state, but half of it comes from West Virginia. In three of every four homes it is used for warmth, cooking and lighting. About 60 houses are burned each year in Ohio by gas jets which have a hinge in them so they can be moved from side to side. There are about twenty-five fires a year from window curtains being blown into gas lights. Gas jets that will swing are dangerous anywhere in the house, unless they have glass globes or wire cages around the light, because they may be turned against the wall and in many places against furniture. The most dangerous ones are those of the double jointed sort used when turned one way to light the door to the cellar furnace, and when turned the other way to light the coal bin. 30 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE The flame of a gas jet will first char the wood which is too close to it and then light the charcoal it has made. No gas jet should be less than two and a half feet from the ceiling. don't blow out gas. The match for lighting a gas jet or stove should be lighted and held in the hand before the gas is turned on. Mrs. Baker, of Shelby, turned on the gas and waited too long before applying the match. An explosion set fire to her clothing. She ran out of the house and fell, dying. When one gas jet is left open without being lighted the unburned gas fills the room and smothers those who are in it, if the doors or win- dows are not open. This is because gas when breathed keeps the blood from getting the oxygen of the air through the lungs. Many persons who did not know how to turn off a gas light have blown one out and gone to sleep never to awaken. Flame changes gas to carbonic acid and water. If the stove is an open one, as most gas stoves are, the water comes out into the room as steam, which is so thin it can’t be seen. In cold weather it freezes on the window panes. It swells the wood in the furniture so the glue cracks in its joints. This steam in the air makes one feel warmer than he would if the air were dry. A room heated by an open natural gas stove need not be kept so hot as one heated by a closed wood or coal stove. THE NATURAL GAS STOVE. The common natural gas heating stove with no pipe to carry the fumes of the burning gas to a chimney is dangerous to life. The fumes from it cannot be seen because there is no soot in it. It has in it car- bonic acid which is the poison always found in smoke. If too much gas is let into the stove, or if it gets red hot, carbon monoxide is formed. The person who breathes air in which there is one-hundredth part of this gas, dies. When breathed it fills the red cells of the blood so that they cannot carry oxygen through the body. In a few minutes every cell in the body is poisoned. Death comes quickly. The fumes from burning charcoal kill in the same way. Persons choked from the fumes from burnt gas cannot be made to breathe again. More lives and houses are destroyed by cooking stoves than by heat- ing stoves. The common causes of explosion in them are, turning open two burners and lighting but one; or, one burner being blown out by wind or by children playing with the knobs which open them letting gas leak into the oven. The fumes from natural gas stoves cause the mortar between the bricks in the chimneys to crumble and fall out. The little pieces often fall till they choke the small pipe from the gas stove. Then the fumes may smother persons sleeping in the room. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 31 THE GREAT WASTE OF FUEL. Half of all the natural gas paid for is wasted by carelessness in burning it and by badly made stoves. To use all the heat in the gas the stove must have skeleton lids to let in air and the bottom of the skillet or pot in which food is to be cooked must be but an inch and a quarter above the burner. This is true of the hot-plate, too. The tips of the flames from the burners should just reach the skillets. If the flame is yellow, gas is being wasted because it is not given air enough to burn all of it. Then the mixer should be cleaned and the air slides moved until the flame turns blue. Burning gas in a coal furnace wastes most of it. The gas logs in fire places waste three-fourths of the fuel and so do heaters with asbestos backs. Only one-fourth of the heat comes out into the room. Any of the many kinds of “radiant” stoves having fireclay mantles and back-walls use all the gas that comes to them and burn the fumes. When gas pressure in winter is too low to heat the oven, bread can be baked and the turkey roasted in a small oven put over the top burner of the common gas stove. Many persons waste gas by letting it burn under water heaters all night. DYING FROM GAS. If you find a person so sound asleep that he cannot be awakened, in a room in which there is a strong smell of gas, throw open the doors and windows and call for help. While waiting for the doctor you should try to get fresh air into his lungs. To do this put him on the floor. Hold his tongue out by fingers with a handkerchief over them. This is to keep the throat open so air can go in. Another person should kneel over his head and catch the arms above the wrists pulling them along the floor away from the body and up along side of the head. After a moment the arms should be brought together and moved down until the elbows, almost together, can be pressed on the stomach. This squeezes out the gas or air which is in the lungs. This should be done seven times each minute. That is as fast as a healthy person breathes. By these movements many lives of those poisoned by gas, or drowned, or stunned by lightning or the electricity from light and trolley wires are saved. NOTE. — A teacher by having two boys demonstrate this method upon another can impress a lesson that may save a number of lives. The boys will be most interested in its use to bring to life persons who have been drowned. 3 ^ Dangers and chemistry of fire LESSON NO. 14. The Dangers from Christmas Trees. IN HOMES AND CHURCHES. The common Christmas tree when finished is a giant torch. The tree itself is always an evergreen whose twigs are full of rosin. On it are put festoons and wreaths of dry leaves or tissue paper which will burn with a flash. Many of the presents are made from celluloid which burns rapidly. Others are covered with lace or embroidery which may be lighted by a spark. The Christmas bells of paper, the netting from which candy bags are made and the dry painted wood in toys burn easily. In this collection of things which take fire easily are placed a number of candles feebly attached to light branches which can be moved by the slightest touch or swayed by a current of air. What a temptation it is to the fire fiend. While the candles are lighted no finishing touches should be made. Doors should remain closed because of the danger from draughts sway- ing the branches or blowing lace curtains against the tree. To leave the tree alone when lighted is dangerous. BLOW OUT THE CANDLES. When you are done admiring the dazzling beauty of the tree and it is time to take ofif the presents, the candles should be blown out. It is very hard to remove the presents from the slender limbs of the tree without brushing one of the many candles against something which will take fire. Anyway, you don’t care much whether the tree is lighted or not while you are watching to see which of the many presents are for you. The most dangerous common practice is that of placing cotton under the tree, to look like snow. The cotton is liable to be set afire by falling candles or sparks from them or from matches used in lighting the can- dles. All of the vegetable fibers like cotton are hollow tubes, so they have in them air, which makes them burn at once inside as well as out. Asbestos fibre looks like snow and it cannot take fire. A tree may now be decorated beautifully indeed at little cost and with greatly lessened fire danger, for there is in. the stores a number of cheap, bright balls and artificial evergreens for the purpose, which will not burn. The Japanese tissue paper now made in Massachusetts is very beautiful for decorations. It will not take fire, even from a candle flame, but will turn to ashes without blazing. The floor under the tree may be protected by a piece of zinc or iron. A Christmas tree can be made less dangerous and more beautiful if the presents are put under it instead of on it. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE .33 A string of nine electric lights for use in trees costs less than $5. In the Northern states one family in fourteen has a Christmas tree. Nearly all of them are spruce from the wild parts of Maine, Northern New York or Canada. When shipped here they have their limbs tied up so they can be packed 600 in a car. TREES IN CHURCHES. The danger to life from the Sunday school tree is much greater than from the home tree because there are more managers working around it. Many kind gentlemen, make-believe Santas, dressed largely in cotton batting while giving out the goods and goodies, have burned to death by the cotton getting afire. Many children have been killed by fire or trampled to death in the panic following a blaze in a Christmas tree. Mineral wool should be used in trimming Santa Claus. Cotton is much too dangerous. CHRISTMAS TREE DONATS. One Christmas twelve Ohio homes were burned by wax candles firing Christmas trees. The facts from those accidents show the need of giving heed to the advice to parents in the “don’ts” which follow : Don’t let children touch the tree. Don’t use festoons of tissue paper or cotton batting on a tree. Don’t use ornaments made of celluloid. Don’t light a single candle until everything is ready for the children to come in. Don’t permit a draft of air to sway the branches, of a tree while the candles are lighted. Don’t let Uncle Henry shift the position of the doll for Jennie, to make it show better, because he is likely to sway a candle against some- thing which will take fire. Don’t leave a lighted tree unwatched. Don’t put cotton beneath the tree to make the carpet look like snow- covered ground. Don’t fail to have a bucket of water near the tree. Don’t remove a thing from the tree until the candles on it are blown out. Don’t let the tree stand long after Christmas, for when dry it is doubly dangerous. What could be sadder than the marring of this joyous and sacred time by the burning of homes and loved ones through carelessness? 34 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE LESSON NO. 15. Fighting Fire in the Home. HOW WATER PUTS OUT A BLAZE. What should be feared more than the burning of the home? There is danger that the lives of loved ones or our own will be lost; danger of loss of all the building cost; danger of loss of pictures and gifts of absent, dead or dear ones, and other precious things that money could not get again. But in a few houses, very few, is there anything at hand with which to put out a starting fire, which would make ashes of these household treasures and of the home as well. The first thing to get is a ladder so one can quickly carry water up to put upon a fire started in the shingles of the roof by sparks. A lad- der is needed at the country school house, too, for nearly all fires in these houses start in the roof or in the attic and a ladder must be used to get into the attic with water. A ladder is often needed to save the lives of persons in the upper stories of burning buildings. In a dwelling the fire soon fills the stairway with smoke or flame so one cannot get out that way. A ladder can be made in a day, or bought ready made for a few dollars. FIGHTING FIRE. The farmer cannot call a fire department. In a farm house kitchen there should always be a bucket kept full of water ready for use to put out a starting fire. The bucket used for water for cooking or drinking is full but half the time, and may be empty at the wrong time. Buckets for holding water for use in case of fire, are made with round bottoms and held by a shelf with a hole in it or hung on a nail. One could not use a bucket that would not stand alone, for scrubbing, or any other house work, so such buckets remain full. In winter salt is put into the water in a fire bucket so it cannot freeze. To stop a starting fire the water can be sprinkled with a broom or thrown with a tin cup. The water must be thrown upon the hot coals below the blaze; not at the blaze. If a farmer has a machine for spraying fruit trees it can have a nozzle with a single hole which will throw a solid stream that can be used upon a burning roof or elsewhere. EXTINGUISHERS TO USE BY HAND The time to win a fight with a fire easily is when it is starting. The most effective help is one of the little chemical fire engines which DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 35 hold a few pints of tetrachloride of carbon. When thrown from the nozzle this fluid makes a gas which smothers flame like a blanket. A boy or girl can put out a starting fire in a minute with one of them. One of these engines, which looks like a squirt gun, is one means of putting out many fires in a home. This gas will smother a fire in places to which water can’t be thrown or will put out oil fires that water can not. You may have seen in factories or hotels cans marked “For Fire” which hold two bucketfuls and which have at one end a piece of hose a yard long. From one of the carbonic acid gas fire extinguishers water is thrown by the force of carbonic acid gas made in the can when it is turned upside down ready for use. When one of these cans is turned over sulphuric acid is spilled from a bottle in its top into a solution of baking soda. When they get together, carbonic acid gas is formed which presses so hard that the water and gas in the can may be thrown through the hose to the top of a three-story house. Three gallons of soda water of this kind are very effective on fires starting in the home. Firemen use both kinds. Firemen think little of the bottles called “Hand Grenades” which are seen in racks or the pretty hanging tubes marked “Dry powder ex- tinguisher.” These are of very little value and trying to use them may cause the waste of valuable time. LESSON NO. 16. Fire Dangers from Grease and Oil. A FIRE MAY START ITSELF. Spontaneous combustion is the lighting of anything from heat caused by chemical action within itself, but the word is often used in speaking of any burning which happens without the touch of a flame, spark or live coal. Spontaneous combustion is the only great fire danger about which whole books have been written, but few people know about it. Fires from this cause usually are spoken of in the newspapers as “probably incendiary” or of “mysterious origin.” What is known of spontaneous combustion, aside from that gained in chemical laboratories, comes almost entirely from fires which are seen when they are starting. They soon burn up the stuff which causes them and then no one can tell how the fire started. The common number of fires a year from spontaneous combustion in Ohio is 160. Of these more than half are from grease on rags. In the United States it stands fifth as a cause of loss by fire. 3 6 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE THE CHEMISTRY OF COMBUSTION. Spontaneous combustion is not hard to understand if one knows how a fire burns. Burning is the same process in the rotting log, blazing shaving and exploding dynamite, the only difference being in the time taken for the oxygen of the air to unite with the carbon in them. If they unite slowly, as in the rotting of wood or the rusting of iron or decaying potato, the heat is borne away unnoticed ; if they unite quickly enough to produce heat that will roast out and ignite the gases, it makes a flame ; if so fast that the swelling of the water, in the form of steam, and the carbon dioxide which are made by all combustion, causes noise and shock, it is an explosion. The taking fire of any material comes from its being heated so hot that the hydrogen and carbon in it begin to unite with the oxygen of the air to form carbonic acid gas. This gas, which is made up of water in vapor and carbon dioxide, is drawn up the flue of the stove by the current of heated air. The carbon dioxide being slightly heavier than air falls to furnish breath for trees and plants, while the water vapor rises to form clouds and return in rain. So, we get back the product . of the burning of our houses, but after it is greatly lessened in value. GREASY RAGS. In the last 200 fires from spontaneous combustion reported to the state fire marshal,, fats or oils on cotton fibers caused 122. The animal fats, tallow, butter and lard unless rancid, are less liable to cause spontoneous combustion than the fatty acids, vegetable oils, linseed, cottonseed, nut, castor bean and olive oil. Although the greases made from petroleum cannot take up oxygen and start burning, they are mixed with dangerous greases for use in automobiles. None of these can take fire spontaneously unless spread over a large surface of easily lighted material, as when a cotton rag is wet with them. Then they take oxygen from the air so fast that the heat from their getting together will, if it is not carried away by movement of air, rise to a point at which the threads of the rag will first char and then take fire. An instance: A mop used in oiling a floor in the Home for Working Girls in Columbus took fire in a few hours after being put in a closet under the stairs. Lime will start a fire if water gets to it and fire may start in iron filings and the dust of other metals. Linseed oil is chargeable with the greatest number of fires from spontaneous combustion. Cotton rags, sawdust or scraps of silk wet with olive or cottonseed oil, will take fire. These oils are likely to get into any pile of rubbish. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE 37 CLOSET FIRES. Many fires start in closets from ragbags, greasy overalls, and from cloths or mops used in oiling the floor. Seven fires from the ignition of greasy clothing in closets have happened in Ohio within two years. These fires would have burned down the houses and been reported as of un- known origin had not some one been near to notice the smoke. Many heavy losses on factories come from fires started by paint dryers, tur- pentine and linseed oil getting on rags or waste. Lard, tallow and butter smeared on rags and thrown into a trash barrel are a source of danger. The storehouses in which rags are picked and baled are very likely to be destroyed by spontaneous com- bustion. Kerosene and gasoline do not dry by uniting with oxygen, therefore they do not cause spontaneous combustion. A large number of substances that are not greasy are liable to become hot and take fire without being near a stove or flame. Many barns are burned by new mown hay becoming hot and taking fire. A few are burned by the heating of shredded fodder, grain and meal. Ice houses are very liable to take fire from heating of the sawdust or tan-bark in which the ice is packed, or used to fill the walls. Per- haps the grease from the mill machinery getting into the sawdust causes some of these fires. Strange as it may seem, materials are most likely to burn themselves when damp. Not long ago a man who had been doing some painting around his home hung his oily overalls in a warm closet and went to bed. He was fortunate in having a dog that slept lightly, for when spontaneous com- bustion lighted the overalls, and then the closed door, it was the barking of his dog that aroused the man in time to save himself and his family. The fire did $2,000 worth of damage. LESSON NO. 17 What To Do IF IN A BURNING BUILDING When you see a fire starting in the house, keep cool ! If you have made up your mind beforehand just what you should do, if the house gets afire, you may keep cool enough to do it. It is well worth thinking about. 3 » DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. If the blaze is just starting, throw water on the material that is burning — not at the blaze. One bucket of water will do more good if thrown on by handfuls or with a broom than if dashed on at once. A small fire may be smothered with a rug or blanket, or beaten out with a wet broom. If you cannot put out the starting fire in a minute, yell fire and then, if in a city, call the fire department. Every one living in the house should . know the telephone number to be used for calling the firemen, and it should be kept in sight on the wall near the telephone. In case of fire there is no time for looking in the directory, even if one should not be too nervous to find the number. Every one should know where the nearest fire alarm box is and how to use it. Do not leave a door open when you run out to give an alarm. If the doors and windows are closed when a fire starts one can almost always get the firemen there in time to put it out while it is in only one room. The fire soon uses all the oxygen in a closed room and may die out if it gets no fresh air. TURNING IN AN ALARM The fire alarm box in the street is quicker and surer than the telephone. In using it the box number is telegraphed to the engine house and the firemen know, from the number, just where the call comes from and get their engines and ladders to it quickly. Nearly all fire alarms are worked by a hook which is seen just inside the box door. To turn in an alarm one must pull the hook down as far as he can and then let go. That is all. This makes a gong at the engine house sound the box number four times, so the firemen may be sure of the count. Before pulling the hook in this kind of a box one must open the door. In nearly all fire alarm boxes this is done with a key. The keys of some boxes are kept in a building near by, and there are signs at the box that tell which building. In other boxes the key can be seen behind a piece of thin glass in the door. One can get it in an instant by breaking the glass with a stick, a stone or a knife handle. The glass falls out of the way as soon it is broken. Other alarm boxes send in the alarm when the door of the box is opened by turn- ing a handle fixed on it. Note — After turning in the alarm, stay at the box until the firemen come, to tell them where the fire is. Then you may return to the burning building and help to save what you can from it; but do not, if you value your life, try to save anything from an upper story when the fire is on a lower one. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 39 WHILE THE FIREMEN ARE COMING After the firemen are called, work at getting out the things you want most to save. Don’t throw the clock or looking glass from the window and then carry out a feather bed or your clothing. Keep cool ! If awakened in the night by the smell of fire, don’t wait to dress, but wrap yourself in a blanket or quilt from the bed and get out of the house as quick as you can. Shut the doors you pass through. After calling help, look in and see where and what is the danger. You can then tell if it is best to try to carry out the household goods. If the fire is on the first floor it is very dangerous to go above it for any- thing, because the heat and choking smoke go up. One can often get out through a hall filled with smoke, by going on his hands and knees, when he would fall choking if he ran. The smoke is thickest at the ceiling. Holding a wet towel, or anything made of flannel, or even a coat collar, over the mouth, greatly lessens the danger of injury to the lungs, or death from breathing hot smoke. CAUGHT IN A BURNING BUILDING Many fires start at the first floor or in the basement of a build- ing and burn a hole through the roof. In a house the flames travel by the stairway; in a big store or hotel they go quickly up the elevator shaft. After reaching the top the fire spreads and burns slowly down- ward, burning the wood that is left. If a man working in a big store or factory sees a fire starting he should at once turn in the fire alarm, from the street box, and also from a box in the building; then try to put out the fire with the water in any. pail near by; or by using a chemical extinguisher, if there is one. If one finds himself in a burning building having no fire escape and the stair below him burning, or the hall filled with smoke that chokes, he should shut the door and transom to keep out the deadly smoke. Then he should throw the window up to get cool air and with his head outside wait for the neighbors or firemen to get a ladder to the window. One should wait there for help even until he is scorched or chok- ing badly. By that time the firemen will probably be holding a big hoop covered with canvas, called a “life net” in which they will catch him when he jumps. Or, the neighbors will be holding a blanket in which to catch him. If no one is near, throw out the bedding, tick and all and jump on that. It is safer to jump into the branches of a tree than to the ground. More than 300 persons are burned to death every year in Ohio. 40 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. LESSON NO. 18. First Aid to the Burned AND INJURED IN BURNING BUILDINGS (In connection with this lesson the Fahrenheit thermometer should be shown.) In every year more than six thousand people in the United States are so severely burned as to cause their death and many times that num- ber are badly burned. A burn of the first degree hurts only the outside of the skin. The burned place is red, painfully hot, and tender. When it gets well the outside layer of skin peels off. This outside layer of the skin is made of scales like those of a fish but very much smaller. To stop the pain from such a burn the air must be kept away from it. Lint or cloths wetted from a pint of water into which a teaspoon- ful of baking soda has been stirred, should be put over the burn and held by a bandage. If there is no soda use sweet oil or castor oil or get carron oil from a drug store. Many mothers use scrapings from a potato.- If a burn of this kind covers a large part of the body it is dangerous and a doctor should at once be sent for. While waiting for him the burn should be wrapped in cotton cloths or gauze or covered with flour. A very large burn which only makes the skin red, with- out blistering it, may cause one to sink and die from shock and pain. Big burns that are not deep, often come from gas and gasoline explosions in which the heat only lasts a moment. BLISTERS In burns of the second degree there are blisters. Blisters are made by water from the blood being poured out to cool the burn. The skin over the blister should not be taken away. The clothing should be taken off with care not to break any blisters. The skin over the blister is the best covering for the raw spot under it until the new skin grows. Burns of this kind should be covered with soft rags, or cotton cloths or gauze dipped in carron oil, or with cloths smeared with tallow. Over the cloths a bandage should be put. Burns of the third degree take the life out of all the layers of the skin and sometimes out of flesh under them. The skin is made hard like stiff paper. The dead skin and flesh is gotten rid of by matter forming under it. While these deep burns are healing, the flesh under them draws up. They always leave large scars. Any deep burn should have the care of a doctor quickly. Until he gets there DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 41 the burned one should lie wrapped in a blanket or be put in a bath-tub filled with warm water. Many persons say a burn should be held near a flame “to draw the fire out of it.” That is foolish. Most of the deep burns are suffered by persons whose clothing takes fire. This is because the flame is kept against the skin so long. Children whose clothes take fire are usually burned to death. scalds. Scalds are burns from very hot water. They are not likely to be deep because the water runs off right away. If the fluid is thicker than water the scald is deeper. Both burns and scalds on the chest are most dangerous to children. Water will scald long before it gets as hot as a flame. Water heated to 130 degrees is as painful to one’s hand as the blaze from a match which is 600 to 1100 degrees. Passing a hand through a blaze so hot gives little pain but one would drop a pan heated to 175 degrees. Tablespoonfuls of coffee or soup heated to 130 degrees can be swal- lowed without hurt, but if the spoon touches the lips it burns them. Although the skin on the soles of the feet is the thickest on the body, one could not stand on a hot plate which he could hold in his hand. A red coal has a heat of at least 900 degrees. Iron begins to turn red at 1000 degrees and the blacksmith heats it to more than 1800 to hammer it out. The flame in a kerosene lamp is 1400 degrees or more. CLOTHES AFIRE. A child with clothing afire should not run or scream. Running fans the flames and screaming takes deep breaths which draw the flame into the chest. To put out the fire, he should quickly wrap himself in some woolen or heavy material and roll upon the floor. Nearly always, one can at once get a coat, a shawl, or rug, or bed or lounge cover, or portiere. One can help one’s self better in this way than by using water, which quickly runs off. Any one seeing a person’s clothing afire should so wrap and roll him. The one who is afire usually has to be thrown down. This must be done to put out the blaze by the rolling and to keep him from breath- ing flame. 42 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. LESSON NO. 19. Common Fire Dangers IN KITCHENS AND CELLARS More than half of all fires in dwelling houses start in the kitchen or from sparks from the kitchen flue. The cook-stove gets no sum- mer vacation. It is always fed too much and the wood of the floor and wall near it, in many houses, is not protected from its heat. A kitchen stove standing three feet from a bare wooden wall or partition may set it afire. If the wall is covered with a sheet of tin, zinc or iron it is safe to place the stove within a foot of it, not nearer. The sheet of metal is useless if it is tacked closely against the wood; it must be held away half an inch, so air behind it can carry away the heat. If it is held by screw hooks it can be taken off to be polished. Bright tin throws off heat better than any other metal. If a lath in a wall is bare from the falling out of a piece of plaster the danger is the same as from a wooden wall. THE FLOOR The boards of the floor under a stove must have over them a sheet of metal big enough to come out a foot in front of the ash pan. If wood is used for fuel the sheet of metal should come out a foot beyond the door through which the wood is put in, because red-hot coals, or the burning ends of sticks which are too long, often fall from this door. Many houses are burned by the igniting of clothes and kindling placed near the stove to dry. A stovepipe that has rust holes in it, or openings at its joints, such as are made by forcing together pieces of pipe which do not fit, is unsafe and should be replaced by new pipe. It should not pass through a floor or partition or through any space in which it cannot be seen, for in such a place it may part at a joint or holes may be formed in it by rust. A gasoline stove should be closed on three sides and its burners should be at least two feet from the floor. A chimney built from above the kitchen ceiling instead of from the ground is dangerously unsafe as any twisting or springing of the joists will cause it to crack so that sparks will get out and start a fire in the attic. All chimneys should be built from the ground. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 43 THE PANTRY A danger common in the pantry is that from a swinging gas bracket which may be swung to either side. The flame from such a bracket may set fire to the paper used to cover a shelf or may start a fire in the wood. Rags smeared with butter, lard or oil may take fire, if thrown where there is no movement of air to carry away the heat made, by the drying of the grease on them. Such rags and the wrap- pings from ham, if thrown into a trash barrel are likely to set its contents on fire. The kerosene can should not be kept or used within fifteen feet of the stove and the gasoline can is not safe anywhere in a kitchen. In- deed, there is no safe place for a gasoline can except underground and even there it is unsafe if not tightly corked. FOUND IN CELLARS The most common fire dangers in cellars are from the top of the furnace or its smoke pipe being too near the floor above it and from the heating pipes being too close to the wood of the building. If any portion of the wood has been charred by heat, the danger of fire is great, for the charred wood will soon take fire. If wood near the smoke pipe is charred it should be cut away at once. Warm air flues should have a collar around them where they pass through a floor because they may become hot enough to set the wood on fire. Trash on the top of the furnace starts some fires. Gas jets should be as much as two and a half feet below the ceil- ing and even at this distance they should have above them a shield of tin which does not rest flat against the ceiling. The double- jointed swinging gas fixture is a common danger in cellars and elsewhere. If there is no gas in the cellar it should be lighted by a coal oil lamp securely fixed in a bracket safely placed. Many buildings are burned by using a match while getting some article from a dark cellar. Cellar windows and other openings should be covered by screens of wire so that cigar stubs and burning matches cannot be thrown through them by the careless. Ashes are liable, if moist, to ignite themselves because of the fine particles of coal they always contain or from being mixed with greasy rubbish. One-sixth of all the gas put in the big pipes in the streets leaks out under the pavement and is likely to get into the cellar through the loose earth around the house pipe. This gas when it reaches any blaze will explode, killing persons and destroying the building. Each of you children expects to own a house some day. Should you not learn how to avoid losing it by fire? 44 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. LESSON NO. 20. Garrets, Bedrooms and Closets FIRE DANGERS TO BE HUNTED The thing to look for first in an attic is a crack in the chimney. Many houses are burned by sparks coming through cracks made by the settling of the foundation of the chimney and by mortar crumbling out. A common cause of fire is a crack between the roof and the chimney through which sparks fall. Among the odds and ends in the attic, usually, are varnished furniture, rags smeared with grease ready to take fire themselves, painting oils liable to take fire, and broken toys of children who are grown and gone away, or went to sleep long ago. Do not keep such things in the attic. The garret is always hot. There should be openings at both ends for cool air to pass through. All the rough wood in an attic should be painted or white- washed, because the fuzz and cobwebs on it may take fire from sparks. The lime in a coat of whitewash makes the wood hard to burn. In summer a thrifty mother went to the attic to get papa’s old suit to cut down for Willie and found a hole burnt in the coat by matches which had ignited in one of the pockets. Some charred match sticks were there to prove it. If the coat had not hung by itself the building would have been fired. Keep the attic clean. Most garrets are dark, so one is likely 'to strike matches while among all sorts of stuff that can easily take fire. Do not keep such stuff there and do not strike matches there. Carry a safe light. As a play house for children the garret is generally so dangerous that they should be locked out of it. THE BED ROOM The joints of the stovepipe should be riveted together and the stovepipe must fit closely both the stove and the chimney-hole. The stovepipe should be 12 inches or more away from any wood. There should be a tight-fitting double collar of tin or sheet-iron around the pipe at the hole in the chimney. Stovepipe holes when not in use should never be left open. They should not be stuffed with paper or rags. Sometimes paper-hangers cover these holes with wall-paper without putting in them the sheet- iron stopper they should have. This is very dangerous. The cord of an electric lamp if tied in a knot or hung over a nail is a fire danger. Gas jets should not be near windows or doors ; the wind might blow a curtain into the flames and cause fire ; or the flame might be blown DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 45 out and the gas escape and choke the people sleeping in the room. If there were another light in the room while gas was escaping, it would reach that flame and there would be an explosion. Any gas fixture which can be moved from side to side should have a stop on each side to keep the blaze away from wood, or the blaze should have around it a globe or wire hood to keep it away from the wall, or dresser, or window curtain. No gas jet should be nearer the ceiling than two and one-half feet. In bedrooms there are fire dangers, from curling irons heated by alochol lamps or electricity. RUBBER TUBES FOR GAS STOVES The use of a rubber or other flexible tube to carry gas to a stove is a constant source of serious danger. The end of the tube may be slipped off unnoticed and allow gas to choke those in the room or let gas escape to explode and burn them. One of these tubes may be knocked off by kicking it, or with a broom, or a child may pull it off in play. The rubber in them gets hard and cracks so that they will drop off near the stove. In many cities the use of such tubes is wisely prohibited by law. .A gas stove used in a bedroom, or in any other place, should have a vent pipe runnning to the chimney. When gas is burned in a stove which has no vent pipe to the chimney, it is sure to injure the health of those who sleep near it. If the gas is turned high it may choke or suffocate them. Gas stoves are often dangerously near wood. They should always have a sheet of metal under them. CLOTHES CLOSETS Most closets have no openings or windows through which the air can move to carry away heat. When the heat cannot pass off, rags, aprons, overalls with grease on them, kept in the closets, may take fire. Such things should never be kept in closets. If they must be kept at all in their greasy condition, put them in an outhouse with free circulation of air; but the only safe way is to burn them. Never use a lighted match in hunting for anything in a closet. The match heads may fly off, or the burning match may drop and set fire to clothing. Only a little match-head, Dropped on the closet floor; Only a little apron, Hanging beside the door ; Only a little creeping, Up to the apron-strings ; Only a home in ashes ! Think of these “little” things! 46 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. Floor sweepings left under beds or in closets are a danger from self- lighting or flying sparks or match-heads, but of course no good house- keeper would allow such a thing! The most dangerous closet is the one under a stairway. If such a closet is on fire, the people can not come safely down the stairs from the rooms above. Putting ashes in a closet is very dangerous. Hot ashes put against wood cause many terrible fires. Fire is a splendid servant but a terrible master. Clean house- keeping and common sense will prevent the fire danger. The time to put out a fire is before it starts. LESSON NO. 21. Bams and Stables SMOKE HOUSES AND KETTLES A fire started in a farmer’s barn is likely to burn it to the ground, because there is no fire department to call. Sweating hay is by far the greatest cause of fires in barns, for it produces spontaneous combustion and draws lightning. Why does hay become heated and sweat? The cells in the grass make hay go on living and breathing for some time after the grass is cut. This makes heat. The seeds in the grass begin to sprout, and tiny germs in the blades live for several weeks after the hay is stored in the mow. These three causes make so much heat that if the mow is full so there is little air to carry the heat away, the center of the hay pile gets as hot as boiling water. THE STEAM FROM HAY This great heat makes the juice in the grass give off steam. So, above every mow in which there is new hay, there ris 6 s a funnel shaped cloud of moist air reaching up toward any thunder cloud which may pass over. This forms an easier path for lightning to pass in reaching the earth than it would find in dry air. There is another danger from sweating hay. The hay in the center of the mow, after getting gas hot as boiling water, begins to char. The charcoal draws oxygen from the air and becomes so hot that it bursts into flame. Shredded fodder sometimes sets itself afire in the same way. Whether the hay takes fire from lightning, or from spontaneous combustion from heating itself, the whole barn seems to take fire at once. In such fires the machinery and the horses and cattle in the barn are all likely to be burned. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 47 LIGHTNING AND MATCHES More than one-fourth of all the loss from the burning of barns is in those set afire by lightning. To save them from lightning strokes they should have lightning rods to carry the thunderbolt down, outside the barn wall, to the ground. A great many barns and stables are burned by carelessness with matches. The farmer or hostler sticks matches in cracks, or carries them in his hatband, to have them handy, and they fall into the litter on the floor. Then a horse or cow, sometimes the farmer himself, steps on one of them and sets it off. Then the litter blazes and the barn burns. The most dangerous thing used in barns is the lantern, which is often broken or upset. Boys who are so foolish as to smoke cigarettes, often hide in the barn and set it afire with cigarette stubs or matches. Sleepy hostlers start fires in livery stables while caring for horses brought in at night. Neatsfoot oil for greasing harness and castor oil for greasing axles are likely to take fire if spilled upon stable litter. Sparks from railway engines and steam threshing machines cause a great number of barn fires. Many more are started by children play- ing with fire or matches, or from burning rubbish. Smokehouses are burned by failure to watch the fires in them. Some buildings are burned each autumn by smoking meat in barrels or boxes. Allowing grease, pitch or paint that is being cooked in kettles to boil over, starts fires which cost more than $2,000,000 a year in this country. Rats and mice like to build their nests in warm corners near stovepipes and chimneys where sparks may fire the fine litter from which they are made. LESSON NO. 22. Smokers and Rubbish THE VALUE OF BUILDINGS THEY BURN The carelessness of smokers of tobacco, in throwing away cigar stubs and emptying pipes, sets fire to about 2,000 buildings every year in the United States. Smokers set fire to a still greater number of buildings by carelessness with matches. They use most of the matches. Fires are started by cigar and cigarette stubs dropped through pave- ment gratings into rubbish ; by throwing them into waste-paper baskets and into wooden spittoons. A number of fires start in barns in which men have been smoking, soon after they have gone away. 48 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. A great fire was started by the driver of a delivery wagon throwing a cigar stub over a fence into a pile of rubbish. Careless smokers start many fires in wood-sheds and in buildings of all kinds. PIPES AND CIGARETTES Burning tobacco from a pipe is more likely to set fire to litter, trash or rubbish than is a cigar stub. A cigarette is worse than the glowing tobacco from a pipe. A Turkish cigarette, once it is lighted, will continue to burn for five minutes, or until it is all burned up. A cigar stub dropped upon the dress of a lady sitting in the grand- stand at a state fair ignited it. Her life was saved by an assistant state fire marshal tearing off her dress. The skirts of a lady standing in the street took fire from a cigar- ette thrown against it and she was burned to death. RUBBISH CATCHES FIRE There is a great loss from letting rubbish and trash gather in buildings. A large part of the fires from flying sparks would not have happened if there had been no trash for them to light in. More than half of all the fires that start themselves by spontaneous com- bustion, start in rubbish. Fires from children playing with matches nearly all start in rubbish, and so do most of the blazes from fire- crackers. Old paper usually forms the largest part of rubbish heaps and it ignites very easily. There is no safe place but the stove for rags that have any kind of grease on them. This includes rags which have been used to wipe oil from the sewing machine. Floor sweepings under furniture or in a closet are liable to take fire spontaneously or from a flying match head. A FIRE marshal's DUTIES A state fire marshal is named by the governor and has an office in the capital. The facts about every fire which burns a building or goods in this state are told him in a letter by the chief of the fire department, the mayor or the township clerk. If he thinks that the man who owned the building burned it to get insurance money, or that some one fired the building because he was angry at the owner, or that it was set afire .by some one who was crazy, he directs one of the men who work for him to get the whole truth and have the guilty person arrested and punished. Any one that burns a building or goods to get insurance money, or to get even with some one, is sent to the penitentiary. One who burns property because he is crazy, is sent to the hospital for the insane. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 49 LESSON NO. 23 Things Made From Celluloid MOVING PICTURE SHOWS No houses and few dressers can now be found which do not con- tain articles of celluloid which are easily set afire. Nearly all the pretty combs, that can be bought for little money, are made of celluloid. Other things made from celluloid are tooth, nail and shaving brushes, manicure sets, boxes for cuffs, handkerchiefs, soap and powder-puffs, trays, knife handles, piano keys, baskets, corset stays, book-backs, playing cards, baby rattles and even eye shades. Any one of these may be set on fire by the heat from a gas jet, or kerosene lamp or electric light. A hot curling iron or the flame from a match will ignite any thin piece of celluloid. Different makers of this material give it different names, such as celluloid, fiberloid, viscOloid, pyralin, zylonite and coraline. Those who use things made from it call it celluloid. Beautiful cloth and imitation leather is made by spreading celluloid on cotton cloth and passing it through rollers. Celluloid is made from shreds of cotton, or tissue paper, which are soaked with nitric and sulphuric acids, and then made into a soft mass by adding alcohol and camphor. The dyestuff, to make it look like amber, ivory or tortoise-shell is then put in. This mass is rolled in sheets and heated while under hundreds of tons of weight which makes it hard If more nitric acid were used the mass would be like smokeless powder, which is used in cannon. Celluloid can be cut or sawn and if warmed can be bent or pressed into any shape. IT MAY EXPLODE Celluloid always takes fire with a flash and burns quickly, making a great heat and much smoke because it, like gun powder, holds oxygen within it, which helps it burn, and therefore does not need to get so much oxygen from the air around it. If celluloid is heated slowly it gives off a. gas or vapor, which when mixed with air becomes an explosive, just as gasolene vapor does. This vapor is just as dangerous as the vapor of gasolene because it will ex- plode when it is touched by a flame, spark, hot coal or hot iron. Several men have been badly burned by celluloid collars, they were wearing, taking fire from matches or cigars. How dangerous must it then be to wear an eye-shade made of it? Who would want the baby to have a rattle made of it? 50 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. George, the four-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. M. G. Thraves was seriously burned when a celluloid comb he had in his hand caught fire from an open grate and went up in smoke with a flash. Both of the child’s hands and arms were burned and the flames also reached his head and face, burning off his eyebrows and some of his hair and rais- ing large blisters on his face. A kerosene lamp put upon the counter in a store in Marengo, caused the ignition of a bunch of celluloid combs which hung two feet above it and set the place afire. A girl in a suburb of Cincinnati was stooping in front of a grate to tie her shoe. A comb in her hair took fire. The burn from this left a scarred bald spot as big as a silver dollar. MOVING PICTURES There is danger of fire from moving picture machines because the long ribbon on which the pictures are photographed is made of cellu- loid. This ribbon may be ignited by heat, sparks, or by the heat of the light placed behind it. The ribbon is one and three-eighths inches wide and one-fiftieth of an inch thick. If a whole show is on one ribbon, it is more than a quarter of a mile long. The ribbon is wound from one spool to another while a bright light passes through it throwing the picture upon the muslin stretched across the stage. If the ribbon stops moving for an instant the heat from the light sets it afire with a flash. Because of this danger picture machines should be operated in fire-proof cabinets; films made from celluloid, which is a cellulose nitrate, should not be used in homes, schools or churches unless so enclosed. For such use they should be made from cellulose acetate, which burns slowly. One is deceived by the moving picture because his eyes see a pic- ture for one-seventh of a second after it is gone. For this reason we do not notice that we wink while reading. We do not notice the closing of our eyes because the time they are shut is less than one-seventh of a second, so, we really see the words all the time. To make a moving picture one must have a theater, actors, a camera with a quickly moving shutter, and a ribbon of celluloid on which are spread the materials used in making photographs. When the actors are ready to begin the play, the ribbon in the camera, which is in the back of the theater, is moved behind the lens and the shutter flies open often enough to let a picture be made on each inch of the ribbon. Dur- ing the show one of these ribbons is moved in front of a strong light so the photographs, one after another, quickly are thrown upon the muslin screen. The time during which the eye holds the picture is as long as the time taken in changing from one photograph to the next. Everything seen in a moving picture really happened once. dangers and chemistry of fire. 51 LESSON NO. 24 Electricity LIGHTING WITH INCANDESCENT LAMPS Electricity is a cause of light, heat, motion and lightning. It is not a substance, for it has no weight, but we can make it, measure it and con- trol its power with machines. The heat of sunshine stored in coal, thousands of years ago, is used to make steam to move an engine. The engine rapidly turns a coil of copper wire near a magnet. This makes the electric current which flows in the wires. The machine which changes motion into electrical power is a dynamo. An engine makes a dynamo turn, causing electricity to travel through a wire. At the other end of the wire the electricity makes a motor turn. A dynamo makes electricity and a motor uses it. A motor is a dynamo run backward, and the electric current is thus changed back to motion and carried to the wheels of a street, car, or a factory. The electric current is easily controlled when- it is carried by cop- per or steel wires, but it passes through the air with difficulty, and not at all through glass or porcelain. When the current is of very high power, as in a flash of lightning, its passage through air creates a white- hot streak that we call lightning and the noise which follows is thunder, caused by the rushing together of the air which was separated by the flash of lightning. Electricity coming from a cloud to the earth is usually attracted by a tree, or a house or other high object, which is usually more or less shattered by the stroke. If the house has a lightning rod of iron or cop- per on it, it gives the electricity an easy path to the earth and saves the house. Electricity for lighting a house is safer than gas, kerosene or candles, because no matches are needed and there is no blaze to set anything afire. But if the wires become crossed they may get red-hot and then it can start wood to burning. WHAT CAUSES THE LIGHT FROM AN ELECTRIC LAMP? One end of a copper wire carrying a current of electricity is con- nected to a fine thread within the glass bulb, and another wire is at- tached to the other end of it, so the electricity in passing through this thread or filament makes it white-hot, because the thread resists the passage of the current and becomes heated, but does not burn up be- cause the glass bulb in which it is held has no air in it. The filament is made by heating a thread of fiber until it is like charcoal, which is made white-hot when electricity passes through it. This causes light. 52 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. The air in the bulb is pumped out through a small tube at the lower end. When the air is all out this tube is melted off, leaving the little point which is seen on every globe. Only a part of the electricity used by an incandescent electric lamp is changed into light. The rest is changed into heat. So the bulb may become hot enough to set fire to anything against it that is easily ignited. A candle, gas jet, or kerosene lamp gives off ioo times as much heat as it does light. The common electric bulb makes as much light as 16 candles. One may easily learn that the common bulb placed against a pine board will char it in four hours and that it will blister varnish in three minutes. If a towel or two thicknesses of muslin or curtain stuff are wrapped around a lighted bulb the cloth will begin to smoke in three minutes, and if pulled off at the end of six minutes it will sometimes burst into flame. Cotton against a bulb will char in ten minutes and then a slight draft of air will set it afire. Newspaper chars in three minutes and may take fire in 45 minutes. . THE HEAT OF T^IE LAMP Celluloid combs, pins and ornaments soon burn explosively if put against an incandescent lamp. It may set fire to a paper shade. A pint of water with a lighted lamp in it will boil in an hour. An Ohio printer dried his rain-coat by wrapping it around an incandescent lamp. When he took it off, a piece the size of the lamp dropped out of its back. There comes a time in the life of every incandescent lamp when it costs more to feed it than its work is worth. This is known as its “breaking point,” for it is cheaper to break it, and put in a new one. A lamp reaches the “breaking point” when used four months in winter or twice as long in summer, when the evenings are short. A bulb which looks brownish should be thrown away. Electric bulbs so placed that the light from them goes straight into one’s eyes, must be frosted or the eyes will be hurt. It takes half as many more frosted lamps to make a room as light as plain ones would. SHORT CIRCUITS The wire which carries electricity to a lamp and the wire which carries away the current that is used in making the light, are usually close together. If the covering of the wires is worn off or is wet where they are near each other, the current will pass directly from one wire to the other instead of going through the lamp to do its work. Where the electricity crosses, is called a “short circuit,” causing the wires to be- come very hot, often so hot they melt and set fire in anything near that will burn. In this way many houses are destroyed. dangers and chemistry of fire. 53 Many buildings are set afire by short circuits in the long cords from which some lamps are hung. In them the wires are very fine, twisted together with only a thin covering between them. When they are wet, tied in knots, hung over nails or bent around wooden corners, the covering will be worn through and a short circuit be formed. A short circuit where one of these cords is hung over a nail will make the nail red-hot and fire the wood around it. Another reason why long cords should not be used is that they allow one to move the lamp against things likely to take fire from it. Ralph Henry, aged 21, was electrocuted when he attempted to turn on an electric light while standing in a bathtub. He had gone to the bathroom and a short time later his sister heard him cry out. She went to help him and found him standing in the filled bathtub holding to the electric light fixture. She turned off the cur- rent and as she did so he fell across the side of the tub unconscious. Physicians were called and brought a pulmotor to the house but they were unable to restore consciousness and he soon was dead. Defective insulation in the lighting fixture, it is believed, caused the current to enter his body. The water in the tub completed the circuit. LESSON NO. 25 Electric Arc Lamps AND TROLLEY- CARS IN CITY STREETS Children who play with the wires of the incandescent electrical lamps are likely to set the building afire. Children who play with wires outside the house are likely to be killed. The pressure of a current of electricity is measured by the “volt.” Half a volt is needed for a telephone wire, 500 volts to move a street car, and usually 6,500 volts for the street arc lamps of the city. The “ampere” is a measure of the quantity of electricity used for making light or running machinery. The number of volts or amperes used is shown by a meter, which is read like a gas meter. The no volts of electricity put on the house wire may burn the skin and may shock one. The wires which run to the street lamps carry many times enough electricity to kill a person. The street and the house lamp wires cross in many places, so a house wire may by swinging against a street wire become charged with enough high power electricity to kill one instantly. Any small wire may carry a killing charge of electricity. 54 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. An Ohio boy was using a fine copper wire for string to his kite. The wire got across the street lamp wire and the current killed him. His mother who tried to take the kite string from his hand was killed too. arcs If a wire carrying electricity breaks, and the ends stay near each other, the electricity may jump across the space between. This is known as an arc. Nothing else on earth is so hot as an electric arc. An arc may be formed by the electricity jumping from any part of one wire to another, if they are too close. Many buildings are burned by arcs be- tween wires. It is an arc in the street lamp that makes the light. The wire carry- ing the electricity has a piece cut out of it where it passes through the lamp. Each end of the wire being attached to carbon tips, with a small space between them, across which the current jumps and heats the car- bon. The heat would melt the ends of the wire if tips of carbon, which can not melt, were not put on them. The upper carbon becomes white- hot and makes the light. Electricity for street lighting passes out from the power house on one wire which runs through the lamps and back to it by another. You may have noticed that light wires run in pairs and that they are held on glass knobs through which electricity can not pass. These knobs are called insulators. STREET LAMPS Most of the street arc lamps now in use have a glass globe around the carbon ends between which the light is made. This keeps sparks from flying about and keeps out the moths and beetles which are at- tracted by the glare of the flame. The globe is frosted to make the light easier for the eyes. One of these lamps gives as much light as 2,000 candles. It costs about $80 a year to feed it with electricity and put in new carbons. The electric arc lamps which give a flood of bright yellow light are known as “flaming arcs.” In them the carbon point has fine pieces of metal in its center and the electricity jumps five times as far as it does in the common street lamp. The metals burning in the current add to the brightness of the flame. New carbons have to be put in them every night. The light given by the flaming arc is five times as great as that of the electric common street lamp. It is equal to the light of 10,000 candles. Electricity always seeks to return to Mother Earth. If a wire carrying electricity touches any other wire, iron rod or tin pipe which reaches the ground, the electric current will rush to the earth. Lightning traveling along the top wire of a fence often jumps more than a foot DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 55 to a cow, reaching the ground through her body, which, being two- thirds water forms an easy path for the passage of the electric current to the earth. A man is also a good conductor, for the same reason. If, on every sixth fence post, a wire is fastened to the fence wires and run into the ground, lightning will pass down it into the earth. A boy could do a “giant swing” or “skin the cat” on any wire carrying electricity without being hurt, but if his feet or any portion of his body should touch the earth or another wire he would drop dead. When the wire which carries the electric current from the dynamo comes in contact with another wire or any metal which enters the earth, the current passes into them and produces what is called a “ground.” Grounds also occur from wires touching gas and water pipes and other wires. A ground is likely to make a heat which will set a building on fire. STREET CAR DANGERS The electric current for a street car passes from the over-head wire down the trolley pole, through the controller, which the motorman uses, to a motor under the car. From the motor it goes through the wheels to the rails The force put in a trolley wire is never less than 500 volts. That is enough to kill one if he is standing on a wet pavement. The cur- rent is the same on the third rail which sometimes is used in the place of the trolley wire. A man who had been fifteen years president of the street car com- pany in an Indiana city, seeing a broken trolley wire, got a step ladder and brought it down. When he reached the ground the current passed through him, killing him instantly and burning his body. His wife was then called to the telephone, to be given the sad news, and a lightning flash along the telephone wire stunned and injured her severely. One riding in a street car would not be shocked by a broken trolley wire, if he is not touching metal parts of the car. Most persons have been frightened by noise and jar from an ex- plosion under a street car. There is no danger at all from that. If the current of electricity becomes so strong that it is likely to damage the motor, a piece of soft wire, called a “safety fuse,” burns with noise and smoke. This stops the passage of the current to the motor. The electric heat-pad which is sometimes put under the bed covers will burn blankets and other bedding if not carefully used. Electric flatirons very often set ironing boards afire when the user leaves them without shutting off the current. In the United States about 100 fires a day are started by electrical flatirons, curling irons, toasters and plate warmers, because of being left with the current on their iron when not in use. 56 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE, LESSON NO. 26 Telegraph and Telephone Wires MAY CARRY A DEADLY CURRENT The dangers from telegraph and telephone wires are almost entirely from their being in bad company. Telegraph wires carry electrical currents with 25 to 60 volts, usually, but such as are worked direct between cities in Ohio and New York or Philadelphia are given 265 to 300 volts. This current would only slightly shock one if it passed through his body. But telegraph and telephone wires at many street corners cross light and power wires which carry killing currents, and they are often on the same line of poles. If a telephone or telegraph wire touches one that is carrying a large load of electricity, it is heated so hot that it will burn any wood it is against, so, any such wire may start a fire that will burn a building. The great danger to life from these wires is from their being broken off and falling across light or power wires during a storm. In cities, so great is the danger from wires hanging or lying about that one should not touch any wire. It invites a serious burn or sudden death. Especially should boys, “Tom Boys,” too, be careful not to climb any pole which carries wires. The ground wire, and the iron tube which covers the lower part of it beside the pole, may carry to them a deadly current. A guy wire, used to steady a pole, may be charged with a load of electricity five times greater than that necessary to kill a boy. A fuse is a piece of soft metal, like solder, which is put into every wire where it branches from the stem which feeds it. If the current becomes too strong, as from a short circuit, or from contact with an- other wire, this fuse melts and breaks the circuit. These fuses are needed, in all wires. The same kind of fuses may be seen through the glass doors covering the knife switches by which light is turned on in dif- ferent parts of factories and stores. TELEPHONES The 100 million people in America have more telephones than the 500 million people in Europe. The telephone has some fire dangers but saves far more property than it destroys, because everybody knows how to use it to call the fire department. The current put upon telephone lines being 20 to 25 volts, they are harmless, and telephone instruments are well protected by fuses and have ground wires to which the current will jump if it becomes too strong. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 57 But a dangerous shock may come through a telephone wire, if a wire carrying a high voltage touches it. At nearly every city street corner telephone wires cross under or over electric light wires which may carry 6500 volts, and over trolley wires which carry 500 volts ; if any one of these telephone wires breaks, its loose ends are likely to touch wires having greater voltage, and become dangerously over-charged. In Wapakoneta a lineman, having a telephone wire in his hand, let it touch the wire of an interurban trolley line and 'was instantly killed. It often happens that unused telephone wires are left on poles and houses until they are broken, or rust off, or the pieces of wood holding them decay, and let them fall across wires that load them with charges more dangerous than those in a pistol. A boy in Toledo, who worked for the telephone company, in pull- ing an old wire, to roll it up, let it touch a light wire. He pitched for- ward against the curb. When a doctor got to him he was still groaning but died a few minutes later. WIRES IN ALLEYS In some large telephone systems the poles may carry 250 wires. They are often placed in alleys, and if a fire breaks out in a building near them, must be cut before the firemen can put up their ladders. If the ends of these wires fall across one which carries power to trolley lines or to machines in factories, they become deadly. In such cases the firemen have to let the fire burn until the current in the power wire is shut off. In some large cities the telephone wires are put under ground. A blind boy of Chillicothe, feeling his way home, put his arm around a pole and touched the fallen end of a wire. Four thousand volts passed through his body and he was thrown thirty feet, alighting in the street dead. While using a telephone it is unwise to touch another telephone, or any metal connected with the earth, for there is danger of getting a severe shock or a bad burn from the current passing through one’s hands. A lady in a railway office tried to use telephones of different companies at the same time and the current made a short circuit through her arm so that she could not let go of the telephones. The station agent tore one of them from her grasp, releasing her from the current. The telephone should not be used during a thunder storm. Accidents from lightning coming in on the wire are common. A lady was called by telephone during a storm. While she was talking, lightning struck the telephone wire and she suffered a terrific shock. The hair was burned from her head and she was unconscious for several hours. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE'. 58 LESSON NO. 27 To Save Lives of Persons STUNNED BY ELECTRICITY At thousands of street corners in cities may be seen groups of electric wires carrying currents of both high and low power on the same poles, or crossing at right angles. On the poles are street-light wires carrying a charge of electricity one-third of which would kill the strongest man. Below these may be telephone wires which would Decome red-not, if a broken light or power wire should fall across them. Fire may be car- ried into 100 houses at once by such an accident. There may also be telegraph wires large enough to carry a charge that would kill a man, and messenger and fire alarm wires which might guide a deadly charge. Below all these passes the trolley wire upon which a current of at least 500 volts is put. A force which will kill one if all of it should pass through one. Often, above them all are wires which are carrying power to run machines in factories. These wires may break or sag and charge the other wires with a current of dangerous power. Such breaks may come from the pressure of a high wind, but they oftener result from the swaying of a branch of a shade tree. In Cincinnati, a light wire, on which was a current of 6,500 volts, was broken during a storm and a young lady, who in passing pushed it aside with her hand, was instantly killed. In the Ohio penitentiary 1,700 volts are used in executing a murderer. In New York 1,200 volts are used for a like purpose, and this voltage is but one-fifth as power- ful as that usual in street lighting service. HOW AN ELECTRIC SHOCK FEELS The Assistant Chief of the Fire Department of Trenton, N. J., had a narrow escape from being shocked to death by an electric current when an overhead wire fell on his shoulders in speaking of it he said : “The shock was terrible. First was a blow on the shoulder which knocked me down. It was heavy, but did not hurt. It seemed weighty, and when I struck the ground I could neither speak nor breathe. I felt as if my whole body was being crushed and still there was no pain. The weight seemed to continue, I seemed to be sinking, and still there was no pain. There was then relief suddenly and I was picked up by someone and carried out. This was after the wire had rolled off, and I could hear what was said about me. I knew what was going on and yet I could not speak. In a few minutes I knew what had happened.” DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 59 WHAT TO DO WHEN ONE IS STUNNED When one is stunned by electricity, either from a dynamo, and is still touching the metal or wire, so that the current is passing through him, parting him from the wire is very dangerous. The person trying to remove the wire must stand on a board or some dry clothing and touch the wire only with a stick of wood, dry rope or a coat, or protect his hands with heavy rubber gloves. In some cases a life may be saved by lifting the stunned one from the earth by his clothing. In other cases the dynamo at the end of the line can be stopped. When he is clear of the wire, and a doctor is called, dash water in his face and rub his spine with ice. Do not give him anything to swallow. HOW TO BRING THE STUNNED TO LIFE One stunned by a current of electricity passing through his body would not be likely to die if there were persons near him who knew how to help him and would do it quickly. The shock of the current makes his muscles stiff so that he cannot use them, and as the heart is a muscle, it sto*ps too. If nothing is done he will never move again. But if his lungs are made to fill with air every few seconds as in life, he may get well. To make one stunned breathe, put a tightly rolled coat or blanket under his neck and shoulders as he lies upon his back. This is to straighten his windpipe. His tongue should then be held out to keep it from closing his throat. A handkerchief used to protect the operator’s fingers will prevent the tongue from slipping back. If the teeth are clinched they may be pried apart and kept open with a piece of wood. One person should stand behind his head and catch hold of both arms at the elbow, drawing them backward over the head and pull on them long enough to say slowly “One hundred and one.” Then move them down- ward and press the elbows hard against the sides of his chest. Then say one hundred and one again. These motions must be made again and again. If the movements are made slowly, using the words between, he is forced to take 15 breaths each minute, which is the right number. Doing this is tiresome work. If there are several persons present it is wise to have one for working the arms and another to rub his legs hard until he revives. The stunned one should be made to breathe in this way until he begins to use his own muscles to fill his chest. Do not give up until this forcing of air into his lyings has been done for two hours, if he does not breathe for that long. After he begins to breathe, he should be kept quiet until his heart beats are strong. 6o DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. LESSON NO. 28 Village Church Fires THE LOSS IS USUALLY TOTAL Through carelessness of the people of the United States more than 600 churches are burned every year. It would cost more than $2,000,000 to rebuild them. One might think that as churches have no cook stoves and no children living in them to play with fire or matches, and as they usually are heated but a day or two in the week, few of them would be burned. The churches in small towns and in the country are nearly all made of wood. The walls are made by standing pieces of wood on end, nail- ing boards on the outside and laths to hold mortar on the inside. So the wall is like a row of wooden flues. A fire started anywhere in the wall would be drawn up under the roof through one or more of these flues. There are no partitions to hold back the fire until people can get there to put it out. In most cases water must be carried by hand for some dis- tance. In many churches there is a spire or steeple which acts as a chimney, making the fire burn faster. So, if a fire is started in the build- ing it usually is burned to the ground. More than half of all these churches are burned because of careless- ness with stoves and flues and most of the remainder by lightning strik- ing the spire which reaches up for it. CARING FOR THE STOVES These churches are usually warmed by “cannon” or “burnside” stoves which burn coal. There are a few “box” stoves in which wood is used. Any church stove which stands on a floor of wood should have under it a sheet of tin or zinc, large enough to come out two feet farther than the stove’s feet do. The coal-box, if made of wood, should be kept six feet away from the stove. The stovepipe gives up a great deal of heat. If there is not a coat of soot in it, it gives out as much heat as the stove. Pipes and stoves should be cleaned of soot twice in each winter. Some one should see to it that the insides of the stove pipes are scraped before cold weather comes every autumn. The stovepipes not being used during the summer, are likely to become rusty enough to show holes eaten through the iron shell, from which sparks could escape. There is an old verse about stove flues which says : A fly and a flea In a pipe were imprisoned. “Let use flee !” said the fly, “Let us fly 1” said the flea ; So they flew through a flaw in the flue. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 6l Jarring or beating will not clean a stove pipe well ; all soot and scale must be carefully scraped out before again using the pipe. THE CHURCH CHIMNEYS A chimney which is supported on a board or stone on top of the joists in the ceiling is very dangerous because the joists may twist and the chimney become cracked so that sparks can escape into the attic. All chimneys should start from a solid foundation below the ground surface. The stoves and flues in churches should be kept in a most sound and safe condition because the janitor goes away after starting the fires before service begins and, usually, returns only to leave as soon as the service is ended, so no one is there to put out any fire that may start while the room is being warmed or while it is cooling. LIGHTING RURAL CHURCHES As a fire danger in churches, the candle is gone. There is small danger from kerosene oil lamps if they are fastened to the wall or hung in harps from the ceiling, except the danger of their exploding. If the wick does not fill the wicktube full, the flame may ignite and explode gas formed within the lamp bowl. A dirty burner adds to the danger, because it holds so much heat that an explosive gas is formed within the lamp bowl. The metal of the burner should be kept clean and bright, and the lamps should be filled only in daylight. The acetylene gas machine gives churches a beautiful white light and is cheaper than coal gas, but is dangerous if not carefully handled. The greatest danger is near the machine, which should be located out- side the church and in a brick house. One part of acetylene mixed with seven times as much air makes it an explosive. Gasolene vapor lighting machines give light that is cheap and are comparatively safe for country churches, if they are kept in a brick house outside the church and are carefully managed. The machine must be set low enough to let the pipes slope upward into the church, so gasolene cannot run into the building. A machine which takes the gasolene into the building is not safe. Lightning destroys more country churches than any other cause except the stove. Every church spire or belfry should have a lightning rod on it. The rod should be examined, before thunderstorms begin in the spring, to see if it has been hurt in any way during the winter. 62 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. LESSON NO. 29 The Burning of City Churches HOW THEY SHOULD BE PROTECTED Heating furnaces cause most of the fires in fine city churches. Heaters, lightning strokes and spite are the three great causes of church fires. Sometimes there is loss of life from a fire in a church. More of these deaths come from people getting jammed in doorways or stairways than from being burned. To let the people out safely all church doors should swing out toward the street, and stairs to galleries should be straight, wide, and not steep. The greatest number of church fires start from the furnace or its pipes. In many buildings the top of the furnace is too near the floor above it. In others, pipes which carry hot air into the church above touch the wood of the floor. If the wood over a furnace or near a flue or pipe becomes charred it is likely to take fire the next time it is heated. STEAM HEATING A steam pipe should not rest against wood as it will char it and then set fire to the charcoal it has made. It may seem strange that steam, which is water in the form of vapor, can make anything burn. But it is true that steam, or heated air, may make a pipe red-hot. Therefore, wood must not come within half a foot of a furnace pipe and all such pipes should be wrapped with some material which will not burn. Painting a tube black makes it give out more heat. Where steam pipes pass through wooden floors an air space should surround the pipe. CHURCH LIGHTING The greatest danger from gas lights in churches is from the gas brackets which have joints in them, because they can be moved to one side and the flame of the gas may touch wood. These are often put in the cellar and are sometimes used to make light near the organ. The lights in them should be covered by globes. Really, there is no place, in which a light is needed, that a swinging gas bracket is safe. The num- ber of churches burned by them is greater than the number burned by the explosion of gas from leaks. The electric light is fine for churches when properly wired. If the wires are put in improperly the electric current may jump from one of them to another, or to a pipe which runs to the ground. Electricity in jumping creates a heat which will not only burn wood but iron as well. Many large buildings have been burned by wires which were too near DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 63 each other. The wires should always be inspected both before and after being put in place. If the proper rules are followed the wiring will be perfectly safe. Christmas trees in churches often take fire from the wax candles used to light them. This may not set the building afire but nearly always some persons are seriously burned and others badly hurt in the mad rush made to escape from danger. PROTECTING CHURCHES The people who own a fine church can well afford to buy water buckets and keep them filled with water, and place them where they can be quickly gotten when a fire starts. Still better, they might have several chemical extinguishers that create a gas which smothers fire. A pipe organ burns easily, quickly and with a great heat. In the basement of nearly all large churches one may find stored in a box, or under a stair, paint, oily or greasy rags or floor mops, which may at any time set themselves afire. Lightning rarely strikes the high office buildings of cities, because they have an iron frame, but a tall church steeple, away from other buildings is liable to be struck, so it should have a lightning rod on it. One in six of all city churches which are burned, takes fire from the burning of a building near it. In more than half of these fires the heat from the burning building cracks the glass in the church window and pieces of it fall out letting the blaze get in. So, to prevent such accidents, church windows should be made with metal sash, fitted with wired glass, which is made with wire woven like that used for chicken coops, but.with smaller holes in it. The wires keep pieces of glass from falling out when it is cracked by heat. The roof should be slate, tile, metal or gravel. Doors which open near other buildings should be covered with tin. The trimming at the eaves should be of metal. Punishment for carelessness about fire dangers falls alike upon the just and on the unjust. LESSON NO. 30 Automobiles and Garages AVOIDING DANGERS FROM GASOLENE The exploding of gasolene destroys many automobiles and garages. If a leaking tank lets gasolene or its vapor come out the vapor may be exploded by a lighted match or one crushed under foot; by a lighted cigar or cigarette; by a lantern light; by a spark from an electric wire 64 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. or from a spark made by striking iron. The machine is likely to be ruined by the fire which follows the explosion. While automobiles were being cleaned in a repair shop the bulb of an electric light was broken and the heat of the exposed thread from which the light comes, fired the gasolene vapor which flashed to a gaso- lene can and an explosion of the vapor in it followed. A dangerous practice common in many garages is to use gasolene to clean an automobile while it is standing over a washing rack. As gasolene is lighter than water it floats and if ignited would burn on top of the water in the rack. Then too, the gasolene is often used from an open vessel which is a very dangerous practice. Men find it easy to clean grease and oil from the motor and other parts with a brush wetted with gasolene, perhaps without realizing the danger in so doing. DEATH FROM EXHAUST FUMES Several people have recently met death by breathing air carrying the exhaust gases given off by automobile engines while in motion. One man went to his garage and started his engine. After he had been away a long time his absence was noticed. He was found dead on the floor of the garage. The engine of his automobile was running and the room, which was small, was filled with deadly fumes from the engine exhaust. In another case a man and his wife were found in their garage ; the woman sitting in the automobile and the man leaning over the door of the machine, both rigid in death, having been killed by inhaling the deadly engine-exhaust fumes, which contain the very poisonous gas known as carbon monoxide, that is formed when a flame does not get enough air for perfect combustion. In each of these cases the engine was evidently not getting enough air. Air that contains one-hundredth part of carbon monoxide causes death in a few minutes to those who breath it. The pulmotor, even if it is used right away, will not bring back life, because carbon monoxide changes the blood so that it will no longer absorb oxygen from the air. The presence of carbon-monoxide in the air cannot be detected by its smell, as it has no odor, nor does it irritate the lungs when breathed, but those who breath it are made un- conscious and painlessly pass away. Private garages should be as large and well ventilated as possible, and when the engine is running while in the garage it is best to have the automobile standing close to wide-open doors so that the dangerous exhaust gas may be. carried off. By no means should an engine produc- ing a smoky or bad-smelling exhaust be run while in a small garage un- less the door be kept wide open. To have a door from a house open into a garage is very dangerous indeed. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 65 SEWER GAS AND GAS METER EXPLOSION No gas formed in sewers can explode. When there is an explosion in a sewer it is because of gas which has leaked into it from a gas pipe under the street or from the vapor of gasolene which has been emptied into it. Most of the explosions in sewers are caused by the ignition of vapor from gasolene which enters the sewer as waste from dry cleaning plants or automobile garages. Gas meters do not explode because no air is mixed with the small quantity of gas they contain, but, if a fire melts the solder in the seams of a meter the gas that escapes will burn like that from a very large gas jet. A meter often is found on the cellar floor after a building has been burned, because the solder which held it to the gas inlet pipe was melted and the shelf upon which it sat burned away. This causes people to think it blew up. LESSON NO. 31 The Ash Heap and the Coal Pile EITHER MAY SET ITSELF AFIRE About one hundred buildings are burned in Ohio each year by ashes fresh from stoves or grates being emptied against boards, fences or sheds, or put into wooden or paper boxes and in wooden barrels. The in- spectors of the fire marshal’s office find many wooden ash boxes in the halls of large houses in which a number of families live. Closets often are used to put ashes in. Many out-of-door ash piles are made against a wooden fence or the side of a wooden building. Ashes that are not hot enough to set fire to wood will char it. When a hot coal rests on this charred surface it will take fire. And if the layer of charcoal on this surface has any kind of fat or grease against it, it will take fire and burn the box or house of which the board is a part. ASHES THEMSELVES TAKE FIRE A large part of ash heap fires are not caused by ashes just taken from the stove or grate, but from self-lighting in the heap. This some- times happens in piles to which no hot ashes have been added within a year. Wood ashes contain many little pieces of charcoal which did not burn completely because there was not enough air supplied to the fire. In coal fires much of the coal-dust does not burn. The greatest amount of unburned dust is found in ashes from grate fires. The moisture gathered from the floor in cellars, or from rain, if the ash heap is out of doors, may cause those particles of carbon to take fire 66 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. if in a mass through which there is only a little movement of air. The most dangerous ash pile is the kind in which the ashes are mixed with sweepings, rags, meat scraps and odds and ends of wood. If ashes are stored in the cellar they should be kept dry and free from trash; if in the house they should be kept in a metal receptacle, not in contact with any woodwork and unmixed with other waste materials. Hot ashes do not have to be red-hot to ignite the waste in an ash pile. Large masses of cinder often ignite. Cinders under walls of build- ings are unsafe if mixed with any trash or if oils are permitted to drain through them. Factories have been burned by this cause. Old cinder banks that have taken fire have forced the removal of houses built upon them. Linseed oil thrown upon wood ashes causes a fire at some hour during the second day after. There should be a law against putting ashes in wooden or paper boxes, in barrels or other containers which burn easily. COAL MAY IGNITE ITSELF The soft bituminous coal, most used in Ohio, may, when in large heaps, take fire because it takes up oxygen from the air in such quantity as to make the coal slowly become hot, and if such heat is not rapidly carried away by free passage of air through the coal pile, it will increase until it becomes hot enough to set the coal on fire. Soft coal is most likely to ignite itself if it is broken into small pieces for it is packed so closely that little air can move through it to carry off the heat as it is slowly formed. When soft coal is piled into heaps while it is damp or only slightly wetted, firing will take place more quickly and certainly than it would in dry coal. Anthracite or hard coal can not set itself on fire. When soft coal is stored inside of a house it should be piled on a dry brick or cement floor and should have a window or other opening in the wall to let the air move through the pile to carry off heat. It should never be piled nearer than twenty feet from the firebox or walls of a furnace, because, if piled closer than that the heat from the furnace will probably warm the coal just enough to hasten oxidation and self- ignition ; nor is it safe to keep the coal in a wooden bin, or to pile it against wooden posts. When coal in a pile begins to heat through oxidation, it usually gives off a gassy smell and sometimes little curls of light smoke-like vapor or steam rise out of the pile. It should at once be spread out in a thin layer and allowed to become cool. The infirmary in Ottawa County burned down from self-ignition of nut-sized soft coal stored in the cellar. An early rising employe saw smoke coming from a cellar window and found it came from the center of the coal pile. No wood was afire at that time, but before the fire in DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 67 the coal could be put out it had traveled up through a wooden box con- taining a water pipe and set the building on fire. Some kinds of Ohio coal will take fire when heated to 275 degrees Fahrenheit, and that is only a little hotter than water is when it begins to boil. LESSON NO. 32 The District School-house FAULTS IN ITS CONSTRUCTION The knowledge we get in our schools has made this the best and greatest country in the world. The kind of school-house of tenest seen is one that is 24 feet wide, 36 feet long and 14 feet high to the eave-trough. A school-house of brick is almost as likely to be burned down as one of wood, because more than half of those that burn take fire from a chimney which is not built right and others burn from careless feeding of the stove, or are set afire by bad men or boys. Usually the door and the teacher’s desk are at one end of the building and the other end is a solid wall. Near the center of the room is a “cannon” or “burnside” stove for burning coal. The stovepipe runs straight up into a brick chimney. THE CHIMNEY In many school-houses the bottom of the chimney is a board which sets on two joists. This wooden bottom of the chimney is protected from the sparks and hot coals which are drawn up through the stovepipe, only by a layer of mortar thrown upon it before the bricks are placed. Sometimes this mortar cracks, so that the sparks drop through it to the wood and after a while set it afire. Iron straps or a stone bottom to such a chimney makes it safer, but it is hard to fit a pipe into a hole in a stone tight enough to keep sparks from dropping through to the room below. A chimney built in this way is never safe. The weight of the brick may twist the two joists which hold it up and the settling of the chimney makes cracks in it, through which sparks can pass out into the attic. THE ATTIC The rough-faced wood in the attic is very dry and, as school-house attics rarely have openings in the ends to let in cool air, they are very hot. So, when a spark strays out into one of them it is almost sure tQ start a fire. 68 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. This danger is made greater by there being no stairway or ladder or hole through which one can get into the attic to throw water on a fire. Even in school-houses in which there is an easy way to get into the attic, a fire is likely to get such a start that there is not enough water at hand to put it out. In most district schools the only water one can get quickly is that in the drinking water bucket, and it is not half full if the children play hard at recess. If a school-house gets afire it nearly always burns to the ground. In every school-house there should be a ladder long enough to reach to the roof. There should be a trap door in the ceiling through which the ladder could be pushed. The school-house chimney should be built in the back end of the building for several reasons. If it is in the end it can rest on the ground so it will not twist and crack open and let sparks into the attic. The stovepipe can then be run from above the stove along near the ceiling to the chimney. THE STOVEPIPE A pipe so placed gives off one-fifth as much heat as the stove, and this heat is given off in the back part of the room where it is most needed. The stove does not need to be kept so hot and the children near the stove will not so often need to protect their faces from heat by holding up their books. Another reason for running the stovepipe through the room in this way is that the sparks from the stove have time to cool before they get out to light on the roof and they are likely to bump their heads in turn- ing from the pipe into the chimney and drop to the bottom of the chimney where they can fire nothing. If they should get out the wind would carry them away from the building half the time. In a straight-up pipe and chimney, in the center of the room, the sparks go out upon the shingles so quickly that they may drop while still white-hot. THE STOVE When one builds a fire in the school-house stove and is then away while the building is warmed up, kindling or the coalbox too near the stove may take fire, or the stove may get hot enough to burn the floor under it. When the fire is covered to keep it over night, the ashes should be shaken down so that the coal which is put in will not come up to the door. The coal will swell one-third its bulk during the night and may get high enough to fall out on the floor through the door, which is left open. A piece of zinc, or bricks laid in sand, should be put under the stove so as to come out two feet all around it. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 69 A school-house stove should be big enough to warm it without being made red-hot. When the side of the stove is red-hot carbon monoxide, a very poisonous gas produced in the burning coal, comes out through it. This gas, when breathed into the lungs, causes part of the red blood cells to crumple up. This causes headache and dullness of the brain during the winter and the child suffering from it grows pale. This is the most important fact in this lesson. Remember the deadly gas. Every school-house should have a slate or metal roof, because it lessens danger from sparks. And, anyway, a shingle roof is always the first thing in a school-house to need repair. LESSON NO. 33 Acetylene Gas THE GAS FROM CALCIUM CARBIDE The flame from acetylene gas makes a perfect light, brilliant and colorless like that of the sun and it shines through mist or fog. Few houses are lighted with it because the first machines used for pro- ducing it were so poorly made that many of them explode, often killing people. At that time acetylene gas was pressed into steel tubes, so that 400 feet of gas was held in one foot of space, the pressure used in filling the tubes being so great that gas was turned into a liquid. These tubes, five feet long and five inches in diameter were sent to houses for use by attaching them to gas pipes. They were found to be more dangerous than dynamite bombs because they might be exploded by jarring them; there- fore, a law was passed prohibiting their use for lighting in houses. Now there are many machines which are safe enough if they are kept outside the house and given good care. Air containing one-thirteenth part of acetylene gas will explode with much greater force than gunpowder. Calcium carbide from which acetylene gas is made is seven-twelfths quicklime and five-twelfths coke, ground, mixed and baked together in an electrical arc furnace at a heat of from 6,000 to 7,000 degrees Fahr. (The greatest heat it is possible to produce in furnaces burning solid fuel is 3,000 degrees.) After cooling the carbide is crushed into small lumps and packed in metal cans holding 100 potinds each, or in one pound packages for bicycle lamps. Carbide cannot burn but if it gets damp it will become red-hot and set fire to wood near it. If water gets into it, the lime slakes and the carbon of the coke unites with the hydrogen of the water to form the lighting gas, acetylene. On this ac- DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. /O count carbide should not be kept in the house, although the small pack- ages used for bicycle lamps have caused little Trouble. Miners use this gas in the lamps they wear on their caps. THE GENERATOR Generators, as the machine for making acetylene are. called, of the size used for farm houses, are zinc tanks which hold about a barrel. In them carbide and water are brought together and acetylene and slaked lime are formed. The gas passes from the generator into a tank more than double the size of the generator. In nearly all generators the car- bide is shaken down into the water a little at a time, by a clock-like machine. The danger of fire or explosion is near the generator. The gas that may escape from a hole in a tube or from the opening of a seam caused by the freezing of the water in the machine, would ignite and explode if an open flame or fire were nearby. A number of fatal acci- dents have been caused by striking a match to see if the work of cleaning the generator had been well done. If the generator is located outside there is little danger of an explosion taking place in the house lighted by it. THE NOSE GIVES NOTICE Acetylene always lets one know when it is leaking, as it has an odor so strong that one part of the gas in ten thousand parts of air gives notice of its presence through the sense of smell. The odor is like that of garlic. Another fact in favor of this gas is, that the quantity of it that is needed to make a light has but one-sixth of the explosive power of the quantity of city gas used to make the same light. Should an acetylene generator or gasolene carbureter be placed inside of the home ? The state fire marshals say no. The water in an acetylene machine will freeze if the room in which it is placed is not kept warm. If the water should freeze some one might be tempted to build a fire near it, or to thaw out the frozen water-seal with hot irons, both of which are very dangerous indeed. In farm houses and churches generators are usually placed in the cellar, and explosion may come from leaking gas being ignited from an open flame or at the furnace fire. Portable acetylene lamps are now made, which, when of an approved type, are fairly safe to use, and it is coming into use for light-houses, search lights, headlights and for lighting railway wrecks at night. The great heat of its flame has led to its use for welding iron, steel and other metals. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 71 LESSON NO. 34 Gasolene Used in Washing BURNS MANY WOMEN AND CHILDREN Gasolene is the most dangerous fluid known. In the United States, the taking fire of the vapor from gasolene, burns to death more than twenty persons every week and dangerously burns more than sixty. Every day more than twenty houses are set afire by using gasolene carelessly. A house set afire by an explosion of gasolene may not be entirely burned down because there nearly always is some woman badly blistered by the flames and her screams, or the noise of the explosion may bring neighbors, or the fire-department, who can put out the fire be- fore it gets a good start. Still, the loss from such fires is more than $400,000 a year in Ohio alone. Gasolene gives off an explosive and invisible vapor all of the time while exposed to the air. A canful of air, or a roomful of air, which has mixed in it as little as one-twentieth part of gasolene vapor, is more dangerous than is a canful or a roomful of gunpowder Air with that much gasolene vapor in it will take fire from an open lamp or light and explode more violently and make a hotter blaze than gunpowder. The vapor given off by a tumblerful of gasolene, if mixed with air and ignited, would explode with as great force as a stick of dynamite would. IT WRECKS HOUSES If an uncovered panful of gasolene is left in a closed room for a few hours its vapor will mix with the air and if a match is struck, or a lighted lamp or open flame is brought into the room, an explosion that would blow the house to pieces is almost certain to result. When vapor on the floor spreads until it gets under a stove, it is drawn up by the current of air made by the heat of the blaze, causing an explosion. When the vapor has no air mixed in it, it cannot be exploded. In a laundry, a man poured a barrel of gasolene through a pipe into an underground tank. He did not first open another pipe which would let the air come out of the tank as the gasolene went in. So all the air in the tank had to bubble up through the pipe down which the gasolene was poured. Of course, this air was full of gasolene vapor. The vapor spread through two rooms and into the door of the engine room where it reached the fire under the boiler. The explosion which followed knocked down two walls of the brick building, burned a man to death and badly burned a woman. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 72 CLEANING GLOVES AND RIBBONS Gasolene cleans grease from leather and silk much better than any other fluid which can be bought for so little money. So mothers and daughters wash gloves and ribbons and dresses with it. Grease is dis- solved in the gasolene and is washed away. Any one who uses gasolene for any purpose in a room in which there is a lighted candle, lamp, or fire, is likely, very likely, to be badly burned. A lighted cigar or pipe carried into a room in which gasolene is being used, will set fire to the air and cause an explosion. The ghost-like vapor will hunt for something to light it. It is not safe to wash or clean anything with it even on a porch. A beautiful girl of fifteen cleaned her long kid gloves and had them on her hands drying. Her brother, as he left the house, struck a match to light a cigar, the floating vapor ignited, and in the explosion which followed one of the girl’s arms was so deeply burned that she never can straighten it, and her face is disfigured for life. Her arms were so deeply burned that skin, and flesh, too, came off with the gloves. The gloves were not hurt. The heat in a pipe will set fire to gasolene vapor. A man who had a pipe in his mouth while pouring gasolene from one can to another, was badly burned by an explosion. A flying spark will light it. A blacksmith of Cincinnati left the screw top off his partly filled gasolene can, and as he struck a piece of red- hot iron a spark from it fell into the can causing an explosion. The shop was burned down. USE IT OUT OF DOORS Gasolene should never be used for washing anything, unless the work is done out of doors and not near any building When the washing is finished the dirty gasolene should be thrown on loose ground which will absorb it. Several explosions have come from the taking fire of the vapor while pouring the dirty gasolene into the sink. A large number have come from pouring it in the slop bucket where it floats and gives off its very dangerous vapor. In every year there are a large number of explosions caused by putting gasolene into the water in a wash boiler while it is over a fire. An explosion always follows that foolish act. Woolen or silk goods, ribbons or gloves, while wetted with gasolene may, if rubbed hard, make a spark which will set fire to it. This spark is known as static electricity and is caused by rubbing the goods to- gether or by brushing them while being cleaned. A lady cleaning a pair of long silk gloves rubbed them together while they were on her hands and made a spark of static electricity which set fire to and exploded DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 73 the gasolene vapor. Alcohol, benzine soap or carbon tetrachloride should be used instead of gasolene for removing grease spots. The Dry Cleaners are now using as much benzole as gasolene, but benzole is no safer to use than gasolene. FIRES FROM KILLING VERMIN Each summer many homes are burned by fires started by house- keepers using gasolene to get rid of vermin which live and raise their families in cracks in bedsteads, in floors, behind baseboards and under wall paper. During one summer sixteen houses in one state were set on fire from using gasolene as a vermin exterminator; the fires were followed by explosions, and five persons were badly burned and four were burned to death, two of them being children who were helping mamma. These fires usually occur from splashing the gasolene about and then, while it is giving off its vapor, striking a match to light some dark crack. Sometimes the gasolene is used at night with a lamp or open flame to give light, and if the vapor from the gasolene is drawn up into the flame, there is an explosion which may start a fire and surely would burn those guilty of this very dangerous practice, which a law should make a crime. LESSON NO. 35 Gasolene Stoves SHORTEN WORK AND MAY SHORTEN LIVES A gasolene stove makes the work of the cook easy, but nothing in common use in houses is so dangerous as gasolene when it is handled carelessly. A new stove is safe if care is used in filling it and in turning the valves. The valves are turned to the right to shut off the supply of gasolene to the burners and to the left to feed them. The can above the stove holds a supply of gasolene, and is called the “tank.” The opening through which the tank is filled must be kept tightly closed at all times. IMPORTANT DONATS Don’t fill the tank which stands above the stove while a burner is lighted. Vapor of gasolene is heavier than air and will fall to the blaze. Then a flash will frighten the person who is pouring it, more gasolene will be spilled and the room filled with flames. Don’t fill the tank quite full. Gasolene when it becomes warm ex- pands much more than water does, and is likely to force open a seam in the tank, and let gasolene escape and take fire at the burners. 74 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. Don’t fail to turn the burners shut before filling the tank, for, if not closed tightly the fluid leaking through them will create a vapor which will explode when a match is scratched to light the stove. Don’t allow too much fluid to flow into the burner, or fail to close it tightly when through using the stove. Don’t fill the tank without first opening windows or doors. Don’t keep the gasolene can in the kitchen. It is not safe anywhere in the house, but the worst place for it is in the kitchen. Don’t pour gasolene from one vessel into another in a room in which there is a fire or light. If you do, the vapor of gasolene, which cannot be seen, will be drawn to any fire, lamp, candle or gas jet that is near. Don’t fail to watch closely for leaks in the tank or burners. Gasolene being much thinner than water, it will leak through a smaller hole than water can. If the hole through which the gasolene is leaking is small, one cannot tell that there is a leak, for the fluid does not fall and make a wet spot, but forms an explosive vapor as fast as it comes out into the air. GREAT DANGER IN FILLING Don’t slop gasolene about for it is more dangerous than gunpowder. Three-fourths of the stove explosions happen while the tank is being filled. A farmer, who was careless, filled the tank of a gasolene stove by the light of a lantern. The vapor exploded setting fire to his clothing. He ran about the building and finally jumped from a second story win- dow. Neighbors ran to his rescue. Wet blankets extinguished his burn- ing clothing. He was carried, unconscious, into the house and died two hours afterward. Don’t keep gasolene in a jug or in a glass bottle, for they are easily broken ; always use a metal can which holds less than two gallons, for the fluid is so thin that it cannot be poured from a large vessel without spilling it. Don’t leave a gasolene can open. Currents of air draw out vapor from an open can. Gasolene will give of¥ 130 times its bulk in vapor ; this vapor mixed with 50 times as much air make an invisible gas which will take fire from a blaze or a spark, and explode with great force. DIFFERENT KINDS OF GASOLENE STOVES It is not safe to fill the tank over a stove if its flame has just been put out. A lady, while filling a tank, splashed some of the fluid so that it struck a hot burner. There was a flash of flame which frightened her so that she set the two-gallon can of gasolene on the hot stove and ran screaming for help. The house burned down. dangers and chemistry of fire. 75 In another kind of stove the tank must be taken off to be filled. Another stove has a hinge in its feed pipe and a lip of tin prevents one from filling the tank until it is turned down lower than the burners. This puts out the fire at the burners by stopping the flow of the fluid to them ; it is therefore of the safer kind. If the tank of every gasolene stove could be placed on the outside of the wall of the building, where the heat from the stove could not reach it, the vapor from a leak would be carried away and not take fire from the burner while the tank is being filled; such an arrangement would prevent the occurrence of many serious accidents. The stove must be fastened to the floor so that it cannot be moved against wood that it might set on fire. The small stove must not be set on a box, a shelf or on a barrel-head. All gasolene stoves should have the bottom and three sides enclosed by sheets of metal so nothing that is easy to set on fire can get into them. The main burner grates should not be less than two feet above the floor. If one thinks he smells leaking gasolene he should open the windows and doors. Then he should look for it with his nose and fingers. If he strikes a match, he may be blown up. Keep the can corked. One could wreck a house with a nickel’s worth of gasolene. In the United States more than 1,000 persons are burned to death each year by using gasolene carelessly. LESSON NO. 36 Gasolene for Lights and Other Uses HOW TO PUT THE FIRE OUT The most dangerous of all ways of lighting a house is by the use of gasolene lamps. Many lamps appear to be so well made that one might think them safe, but gasolene is always a dangerous thing to have in the house, and even a good lamp may be upset or broken, spilling the gasolene. Some one may try to fill it while it is burning, or the wick-tube may not be properly screwed down. There is always danger of the gasolene can being upset or left uncorked, or of the gasolene being used to start a fire. A gasolene lamp must not be carried about. It should be remem- bered that gasolene is, at all times, giving off a vapor which makes an explosive of the air with which it mixes. 76 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. If the gasolene in the tank of a lamp or stove takes fire, it should be carried out of doors, if possible. The person carrying it must go backward so the flame will be drawn away from him. The gasolene lamp, which looks like a covered skillet on the shank of a big fish-hook, and which is hung on posts in markets is perhaps, not so dangerous. In these lamps the gasolene flows down hill to the burner at the tip of the hook, and being out of doors so much air moves past the burner that not enough vapor will escape to make all of the air explosive. But there are some lamps for outdoor use which have a rubber bulb, or air pump, which forces the gasolene down faster. These are twenty times more dangerous because the pressure will spray gaso- lene into the air through a leak or open burner. CABURETORS Many houses and stores are now well lighted by gasolene vapor, made in machines placed outside of the house, and the vapor is burned in a mantel like that used with city gas. The vapor of gasolene is more dan- gerous to use in a house than any other gas because it settles to the floor and only needs a spark, or light to explode it. Other gases rise and are carried away. The smaller machines which are kept inside the house are more dan- gerous because the gasolene supply must be brougt into them, and any one who tries to fill one of these machines at night is sure to be blown by the vapor reaching the light he uses. The great heat and power created by the explosion of gasolene vapor which has been ignited within a confined space makes it the cheap- est fuel for running small engines. Many farmers now use these en- gines to grind feed, shell corn, pump water and to make butter. Plows and reapers, sewing machines and grindstones, can be driven by them. The only fire danger from them is from having gasolene about. The torches used by painters, plumbers and tinners for heating metals are very dangerous indeed. The gasolene within them is kept under pressure by a rubber air-bulb ; they sometimes explode killing the workman. Fifteen kinds of liquid stove polish and several kinds of furniture polish mixed with gasolene are sold. They are very dangerous and may be known by their odor. USING THE WRONG CAN Many sad accidents come from gasolene being mistaken for kero- sene or water. Sometimes the store-keeper fills the kerosene can from the gasolene tank. Sometimes gasolene is thought to be water. A mother once brought gasolene from the grocery in a tin bucket. Her daughter filled the coffee pot with it and was burned to death by its explosion. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 77 Some peddlers go from house to house offering a “safety” or “magic powder” which they say will make a barrel of gasolene as safe as a bar- rel of vinegar. They are all frauds. Anything added to gasolene which would make it safe, would make it useless. PATENT MEDICINES FOR GASOLENE The peddler in trying to sell this patent medicine, to cure gasolene of its bad habits, does some startling tricks. He puts some of his powder into a dish of gasolene and then drops into it lighted matches, which it puts out. He then pours burning gasolene from one dish to another without causing an explosion. Next he puts a cover over the dish and the blaze goes out. All these. tricks can be done with any gasolene. Gasolene itself will not explode — only its vapor when mixed with air can explode. So, if a match is dropped into gasolene which has not been in a dish long enough to give off vapor, it goes out. Gasolene when lighted burns like alcohol without exploding. Any kind of a fire must go out if a lid shuts away the air from it, for the oxygen of the air is needed for every kind of burning. PUTTING OUT GASOLENE FIRES A gasolene fire can be put out by smothering it with wet rags, woolen cloth, flour, meal, sawdust, sand, or ashes, if the amount of fluid burning is small. If the amount of gasolene burning is large even a deluge of water will not surely shut off the air from it and put the flame out. A little water only spreads Xhe flame, for the gasolene continues to burn as it floats on it. If burning gasolene is boiling or flowing from a can or tank it should be cooled with water to lessen the amount of vapor given off and be al- lowed to burn itself out — if it cannot be carried outside. The only liquid which will surely put out a gasolene fire is known as carbon-tetrachloride, which gives off a vapor which will smother it. This liquid is used by firemen and it should be kept in homes for putting out fires, and to take the place of gasolene for cleaning ribbons and clothing. LESSON NO. 37 The Lightning Stroke WHAT CAUSES THUNDER STORMS The thunder storm usually begins to form in the morning of a hot day. The damp air near the ground has in it very, very tiny drops of water which form a mist or fog. The air filled with mist, when warmed 78 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. by the sunshine striking the earth, grows lighter and floats up into the sky. The cooler air of the sky causes several of these tiny drops to get together to form a larger one, making clouds. Masses of white clouds seen on a sunny day are called “thunderheads.” A cloud is usually thicker than it is wide. One traveling through a cloud, as one may near the top of a mountain, sees only a heavy thick mist. The tiny drops rubbed by the wind gather electricity just as the cat’s back, or a piece of sealing-wax does when rubbed. So every cloud has electricity in it. As the amount of electricity grows greater the cloud grows blacker. When the cloud is thick enough to shut out the sun- shine the air gets cooler and causes the tiny drops to “cuddle up” and form larger and larger drops. Soon these drops get too heavy for the air to carry and they fall, making rain. You have often noticed a rush of cool wind just before a hard rain. THE FLASH When the amount of electricity in a cloud becomes much greater than it is in the earth, or in another cloud near it, part of it will be drawn off. This electricity when it jumps from one cloud to another, or to the earth is the thunderbolt of lightning. What we see is the streak of air made red hot by the passing of the thunderbolt. There are many more light- ning flashes from one cloud to another than from a cloud to the ground. The flashes between clouds are often several miles long; from the cloud to the ground they are from one to three miles long. One lightning stroke in about one hundred travels from the earth to the cloud. * The jumping of electricity from the feed-wire of a street car to the trolley wheel, makes a flash which is the same as lightning. One often thinks he can tell by the flash where a thunderbolt started and where it struck. He cannot. The flash travels sixty thousand miles a second and that is too fast for one’s eyes to follow. If the flash was forked you may be sure it struck at the forked end. There is always some electricity in the air, the amount being largest high in the sky. A Russian has run a machine with electricity brought down by wires from balloons. A German has figured out how much the electricity in a lightning stroke would be worth to sell, if he should make a machine to catch one. These gentlemen must agree with the poet Emerson who wrote : “The lightning has run masterless too long ; He must to school and learn his verb and noun, And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage.” We now use thunderbolts to pull us in cars and to light our houses. But they are man-made in the dynamo ; not cloud-made in the sky. In learning to control powerful currents of electricity from the dynamo we also have learned that we can keep lightning strokes from DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 79 burning our houses, by putting over each house a thick wire of steel or copper, called a lightning rod. THE THUNDER What makes the thunder? When a bolt of lightning rushes to the earth it causes waves in the air, which makes sounds in our ears, just as piano wires, when struck, move up and down making waves in air which we hear as music. Thunder is said to “roll.” This is because several bolts of electricity fall one after another; sometimes as many as forty in less than a second. The first bolt makes a hole through the air down which the others quickly chase. Each bolt adds a noise. You have often dodged from a thunder clap. This is useless. The danger is passed before you hear it. One struck by lightning knows nothing about it at the time. THE DISTANCE The waves which make sound do not travel so fast as those that give us sight. If lightning strikes one mile away it is five seconds before the thunder is heard. If you hold a watch so as to count the seconds, you can tell how far it is to where the lightning struck. Electricity moving through the air forms a nitrate which makes the ground richer. Ozone also is formed. Ozone makes us feel fresh after a thunder storm. Some folks say thunder sours milk. It is the ozone that sours it. The air is always fine after a storm because it has been washed. Fine particles of soot and dust carrying disease germs, and the gases from smoke floating in the air, are taken to the ground by the millions of rain drops. Few storms travel more than ioo miles. In the northern states there are about 30 thunderstorms each summer. The number of storms is not increasing, but the number of persons killed and houses burned by lightning, grows greater every year. One reason for this is that the forest trees, which are nature’s lightning rods, are being cut down. LESSON NO. 38 Protection From Thunderbolts THE USE OF THE LIGHTNING ROD Lightning burns about $5,000,000 worth of property in the United States every summer. The number of persons killed by being struck by it, is not less than eight hundred. Many of these persons would 8o DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. not die if made to breathe, in the way you learned in the lesson on shocks from electric wires. The number stunned by lightning is never less than five thousand. On . the farms half as many buildings are burned by lightning as are burned by all other causes put together. One of each of three buildings struck by lightning is in a town or city. But few of the high buildings in cities are struck because they have in them water pipes, or gas pipes, or metal frames through which electricity can move easily. Barns having new mown hay in them are most likely to be struck by lightning. This is because the hay is “sweating,” as the farmers say, and warm, moist air is rising from the barn to the clouds, just as moist air heated by the sun, goes up to make a thunder cloud. Moisture in air makes it easier for electricity to break through the air over the barn. DODGING THUNDERBOLTS During a thunderstorm do not stand under any tree. One is in less danger in a house than in a barn. It is foolish to say it is dangerous to hold a hatchet or a pair of scis- sors or to be near a gas or water pipe during a storm. Pieces of iron or steel which do not reach the ground but have air all around them, are no more likely to be struck by lightning than that much wood. Houses having gas and water pipes in them are not so likely to be struck by lightning as those that have none. It is foolish to say one is safe under a feather bed or in an iron bedstead. It is best to stay near the center of the room because lightning is likely to run down the rain-wet sides of the house. One should not stand in an open door. It is not wise to stay near the chimney because it is the highest point of the house and the moisture in smoke makes it easier for the thunderbolt to come down to it. A lightning rod over a house or barn carries the thunderbolt down outside to the ground, so it kills no one and sets nothing afire. Many horses and cattle are killed when standing or lying near a wire fence by the jumping of a lightning stroke from the fence through them to the ground. WHAT IS A LIGHTNING ROD? A lightning rod is made of steel or of copper and is run over the roof of the building the long way and has both its ends buried in the ground. The ends must go down to the earth that is kept always moist by the water which fills our wells. If the rod does not go down to the wet earth it is useless, but not dangerous. Standing up from the rod are pieces of metal about a yard long. At the top of each of these pieces are sharp prongs made of some metal which will stay bright. The more prongs the better. A piece of the rod should stand up near each chimney. DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. 81 The chimney of the cook stove needs one the most, for, from that chim- ney moist air rises on summer days during which there are the most lightning strokes. If the branch of a tall tree hangs over the house there is danger from the lightning striking the tree and coming down the chimney or the side of the house. A wire clothes line should not run from a tree to the house. One summer a farmer’s wife was hanging clothes on a line put up in this way, when a thunderbolt struck the . tree, passed along the wire and through her body to the ground. She fell dead. The wire from the tree to where she touched it was changed to gas by the electricity which passed along it. Lightning does many strange things. It may pass down through a house pulling out nails without setting the house afire. Persons killed by lightning while sitting, are left so stiffened that they do not fall over. Lightning striking a man is likely to tear off his shoes because it spreads, with a loud noise, when it reaches the ground. The state fire marshal in his report for 1920 says : “Lightning caused 129 fires in Ohio with a loss of $312,701. These fires were all on unrodded buildings. Not one fire was reported on a rodded building.” LESSON NO. 39 The Less Dangerous Fireworks WHICH BURN BUT SELDOM KILL There are many kinds of fireworks used on the Fourth of July in the Northern States, and at Christmas in the Southern States, which are likely to kill a boy. Many cities and some states have very wisely passed laws for- bidding the use of fireworks at any time. Anything which when ignited will explode giving off sparks and flame is dangerous to both property and life and should be abolished without regret. On what now is called “an old-fashioned Fourth” more than 600 buildings in Ohio were burned and more than 200 persons killed by fire- works. Always on this day in times past a large number of children were burned to death by fireworks setting their clothes afire, and more than 2,000 children lost hands and fingers or were made blind by gun- powder explosions, while many others died from lockjaw caused by their wounds. TORPEDOES AND CHINESE CRACKERS The common torpedo has in it a wafer like the cap of a toy pistol, holding chlorate of potash. On this are a number of pieces of gravel. 82 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. When a torpedo strikes anything the blow from the gravel explodes the chlorate. A large and more dangerous torpedo has in it chlorate, phos- phorus and chloride of antimony. A boy lost three fingers by trying to drive a nail through a torpedo of the kind often exploded under the wheels of street cars. They are made of chlorate and sulphur with ground glass or sand. One maker puts in them fulminate of silver, which is very dangerous. Red fire and torches hurt no one, but they make enough heat to set wood afire and the pinwheel seldom does harm because it is fastened to a tree or fence, but sparks thrown off by it may set fire to the cloth- ing of children or others. The small Chinese firecracker burns more houses than any other kind of fireworks, because so many of them are used by children. The paper from which it is made glows for some time after it explodes, and if one of them is thrown into trash or into a house through a window it is likely to start a fire. This firecracker is a roll of paper with a stopper of mud in each end and a charge of common gunpowder in it. Chinamen work for such small pay that it is cheaper to buy these crackers in China than to make them here. THE ROMAN CANDLE The Roman candle, if well made, and handled with care, is not likely to seriously injure one. It is usually “set off” in the street and may set houses afire, as the “stars” shot from it by a charge of gun- powder are very hot and will set fire to window curtains and the like. If the stars near the end of the candle which holds the fuse are packed too tightly, the gunpowder in the tube may explode and burst the paste- board shell, or may be blown out at the wrong end and burn the hand that holds it. Many so-called mines, fountains and flower-pots make a very beau- tiful display and few persons are seriously burned by them. Those that whistle are very dangerous, as they contain a picrate which forms a pow- erful explosive and should not be used. The toy balloon does not hurt the one who sends it up. But the torch of shavings and rosin suspended under it, which when lighted makes the gas that raises it, continues to blaze for nine minutes. The paper of the balloon often takes fire from the wind doubling it up. Then the torch, still burning, falls. If it drops on a roof of wood the build- ings takes fire. In Dayton, Ohio, five buildings were set on fire in one day by these toy balloons. The sparks from the German “sparkler” may not burn the skin, but they are hot enough to set fire to a child’s flimsy clothing, and as the wire in it gets red-hot. the “sparkler” is dangerous for children to handle. One of its sparks will ignite the fuse of any other kind of firework, as was proved when a spark from one of them lighted a rocket in a pile of DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. A 83 fireworks in a Cleveland store, causing the death of six p^rsorfs/ 'and the injury of many others. THE SKY-ROCKET Sky-rockets, if aimed high in the air, burn few buildings because the falling stick is seldom afire. But in Pittsburgh a falling stick struck a baby’s head killing it in its mother’s arms. The colors in sky-rockets are made by different substances added to the “stars.” Paris green makes a beautiful blue color. A sky-rocket should stand in a V-shaped trough when set off. To do it any other way the rocket may go through a window and set fire to a house. A rocket of common size when set off will go through the body of a man, or will make a hole through the heaviest plate-glass window. The rocket is raised from the ground by the force of gas from slowly burning gunpowder coming out at a hole in which the fuse was held. At the top of the tube that holds the powder there are fuses fastened to the stars, which are lighted when the powder burns up to them. “hoppers” and “chasers” The “grass hoppers” and “devil chasers” which jump over the ground while exploding are not likely to injure a person, but they are liable to pop into rubbish piles or cellar windows and start a fire. A new kind of firework called “son-of-a-gun” is shaped like a lozenge, an inch wide. It makes more than twenty snap explosions if stepped on. Putting them where persons may step on them and get a fright may prove to be more serious than funny. This type of firework makes more than 20 explosions and each explosion drives it to a new place. It is likely to jump into a window, into trash of clothing or one’s eye. More children are burned to death from their clothing being set afire by small crackers than by any other firework. The prettiest fire- works are usually the least dangerous and fireworks which go up in the air are safer than those that are exploded near the ground. LESSON NO. 40 Deadly Fireworks WHICH HAVE KILLED MANY The toy cannon is a great joy to a boy, but it kills far more than its share of children. It is the wickedest of the fireworks in which gun- powder is the only explosive. The hurts come from its kicking, and the deaths from its bursting, when fired. 8 4 v \ 'DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. aVj/ The' very dangerous fireworks contain a mixture of chlorate of po^n, sulphur and charcoal. Substances which explode with greater force than gunpowder are called “high explosives.” Chlorate is one of them. This is the chlorate of potash so much used for curing sore throats. Not long ago a man put a lozenge of it in a pocket in which were matches, which caused an explosion that made a hole in his vest, and in his side too. The “shooting” and “lightning” matches have grains of chlorate of potash in them which explode as the flame reaches them. They may throw sparks into rubbish or other material which will take fire easily, or perhaps, into one’s eye, putting it out. SHOOTING CANES The shooting cane has an iron boot, in the leg of which are put lozenges so that one of them explodes each time the end of the cane is struck against the pavement. The lozenges are composed of two parts chlorate of potash and one part sulphur, mixed with a little sand, pow- dered glass or coal, with gum enough to hold them together. This makes a very dangerous explosive. One’s foot is likely to be hurt when a lozenge is exploded near or against it, and half a dozen may be exploded at once, tearing off a leg. A boy struck one of these canes near the feet of a passing lady, ignit- ing her dress and she was burned to death in the street. On the Fourth of July in 1921, a boy placed a pistol cartridge where a street car exploded it and another boy passing by on the pavement was killed by the bullet. THE CANNON CRACKER The cannon cracker is a murderer. The largest ones have in them two-thirds of an ounce of chlorate, and one-third of an ounce of sulphur with a little charcoal. Those seven inches long have half as much. One exploded while in a boy’s hands and no part of either hand could be found afterward, except one little finger. In Cincinnati one exploded while a man was holding it under his arm. He was so tom into pieces that no one could tell who he was until his name was discovered in his watch, which had to be dug out of a telegraph pole in which it had been driven by the great force of the explosion. Dynamite is not used in fireworks. The most deadly thing used on the Fourth of July is the toy pistol. Pieces of the paper caps carrying with them the germs of lock-jaw, may be blown under the skin making death certain. 85 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRfy Y/y/ "/> / ) LOCKJAW /. . '// . Lockjaw is caused by one of the smallest of germs. This ^erni is like a very short thread and is so small it cannot be seen by the naked eye. It grows by the million in the bowels of horses. So, there are always millions of them in the street dust, where it dries up and is harm- less so long as there is air around it. The germs stay alive in ice or in boiling water. Doctors have kept them on splinters for ten years and then given lockjaw to mice by pricking them with the splinters. When they get into a wound in one’s flesh, and away from the air, they grow in numbers very fast by each threadlike germ choking itself in two in the middle. One of them will have grand children in an hour. While they are multipling in one’s flesh they give out a poisonous juice. No one can tell that these germs are at work in a wound for a week or two, until the poison has traveled along a nerve from the wound to the spine and brain. When this poison reaches the brain, death is sure to follow after days of more horrible suffering than one would have from strychnine poisoning and a mad dog bite put together. A boy playing with fireworks nearly always has street dust on his hands and it carries these terrible germs of lockjaw. 86 DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. FIRE SONG 1 . Listen to my story old — my mission well you know : I warm you with my balmy breath, when chilly breezes blow. The Spirit of the Flame am I, God’s gift to man below — Blessing or bane, as ye make me ! Rejoice! Rejoice! Your servant true I’ll be, But O beware! From all abuse I’ll flee! Your homes I’ll turn to ashes, while I laugh aloud with glee — Blessing or bane, as ye make me ! 2. I’m the King of Fireland — my subjects love my sway; I hide within the matches; in the glowing embers play; I warm the little fingers on a frosty winter day — Blessing or bane, as ye make me ! Rejoice! Rejoice! Of service true I sing, But O beware, lest cruel Death I bring! To ev’ry wind of heaven I would now this warning fling: — Blessing or bane, as ye make me ! 3. I’m the King of Fireland — my scepter’s tipped with flame. I stretch it forth, and things I touch are nevermore the same ; Imprison me near walls of wood, and ye must bear the blame — Blessing or bane, as ye make me ! 4. I’m the King of Fireland — my touch all things can change; For Oil and Gasolene I have a longing passing strange; I care not who may perish ; when they come within my range — Blessing or bane, as ye make me ! 5. I’m the King of Fireland — I leap across the wires; In “circuits short” I make my rounds, and kindle mighty fires, With tiniest of match-heads I can light my- fun’ral pyres — Blessing or bane, as ye make me ! DANGERS AND CHEMISTRY OF F\ Wfa. 8 7 VAMPIRES THREE. (a recitation for fire prevention day.) Wind Speaks. I speed the sailor and whirl the mills And make a harp of the tree; I waft the showers that bring the flowers To dapple each dale and lea. But woeful the ways that in hunger I choose To blast with my awful breath, For I shatter and wreck and naught may check My terrible dance of death. Water Speaks. I bear the vessels and turn the wheels And give the desert the rose. I ripple in rills and leap down the hills Or lie in a glassy repose. Though I do man’s hest without spoil or meed Cooped up in river or lake, When I surge in wrath from my wonted path Wild ruin I leave in my wake. Fire Speaks. I am vassal of man and I do his will In many a wondrous way; If he chain me sure I am fain to endure His mastery night and day. But should I escape from my dungeon red By charring the bolts and bars, I chasten my master with hell’s disaster And flaunt my head to the stars. — O. H. Roesner, in Magazine of the N. F. P. A. iiiwrc of mmn librae * SFP 1923 V cn .-■rW? 1