Dangers of Celluloid.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11, 11 September 1912, Page 12

Dangers of Celluloid.

EASILY IGNITED MATERIAL. We have had many lessons in the Old Country during the past ten or fifteen years of the dangers attaching to the use of celluloid in many branches of industry, and scores of illustrations of the dangers attaching to the use of celluloid by way of personal adornment. On Tuesday evening last London was shocked by another fatal fire which, so far as can be ascertained, was directly traceable to the accidental ignition of celluloid through a piece of red-hot seal-ing-wax. The result was that eight young women and girls lost their lives, and it was only a happy combination of circumstances that prevented the fire developing into a devastating holocaust and claiming victims by the score. The scene of the outbreak was the premises of Messrs Angus Thomas and Co., Christmas-card publishers, who occupy the sixth floor of a large block of buildings in Moor Lane, in the very heart of what the London Fire Brigade and the insurance companies know as the “danger zone” of the City. Messrs Thomas’s premises—two rooms occupying about 2,200 square feet—were used for a process known as “ aerography,” which may be described as tinting and pow'dering cards by means of an air-brush. Celluloid and methylated spirits (a combination that would rejoice the heart of a Yankee “fire-bug’ ) are used in some of the processes. It was in the front room that the fire originated. The actual cause must remain more or less a mystery, but, so far as can be gathered, the outbreak seems to have been the result of dropping some hot sealing-wax on celluloid, which at once burst into flames. Those at work in the front room ran to the staircase and escaped. Those in the back room, however, could not get to the staircase in time, the flames having spread with great rapidity. Indeed, the fire seems to have been at first more like an explosion. Finding their escape cut off, the girls in the back room became panicstricken, returning to their own room and going to the window, which seemed to offer the only hope. Here they waited and screamed. The clothes ot most of them were on fire. Some efforts were made by those in rooms in an opposite building to help them. A plank was put across, and two of the girls safely escaped by this means, while a third lost her nerve and fell into the yard below. Others jumped a distance of 70ft, some being killed, and those who were not killed outright being terribly injured. One girl went, through a glass skylight covered with wire-netting, and dropped on to a desk in the room below. She was in flames when she jumped, but going through the skylight not only broke her fall but extinguished the flames, and when the firemen broke into the room whore she was they found ■ her walking about, badly burned and half-demented with pain and horror, and crying “Horrible! Horrible I” Others climbed on to the roof, and five wore found burnt to death there when the firemen arrived, which was within seven minutes of the alarm being given. They were in time to prevent the lire spreading, and in less than half-an-hour from the alarm all danger of an extension was over, but the engines continued to play on the gutted sixth floor for some time ■after, to make assurance doubly sure, for in the building itself and in the surrounding warehouses were tons upon tons of stuff of a highly-inllammable nature.

The block in which the outbreak occurred -is encompassed by narrow thoroughfares, in all of which are equally high Iniildi-ngs where trades requiring the storage ami handling of more or less inflammable goods are carried on. Fire in any part of this busy centre, of course, imperils the houses in the immediate vicinity, and on Tuesday evening the danger was all the greater because the flames broke out at a time when the narrow streets are usually full from end to end with vans loading with all kinds of merchandise for despaich by rail. Happily, the vans wore fewer than usual, and the brigade got through the press ot traffic in well-nigh record time. Their speedy appearance undoubtedly averted a. tremendous ilestvuction of property, and probably a greatly enhanced death roll; but swift as they wore, they might have failed but for the fact that Ibero was no wind t<® Carry the first fierce blasts uf flam® “oroaa the narrow streets.