Churches as Fire Traps

Progress, Volume XI, Issue 10, 1 June 1916, Page 637

Churches as Fire Traps

Boston has just had, for the first time in recent years, a general inspection of churches with a view to fire prevention. Conditions were found veiy unsatisfactory. A writer in an American exchange says that fire-escapes, automatic-sprinkler systems, and hand-fire extinguishers must be installed in many Boston churches as a result of orders issued to church-trustees by Building Commissioner O’Hearn, who has just completed an investigation of the four hundred churches of all denominations in the city. His inspection lasted several weeks. Some of the typical unsafe conditions found by the Commissioner and his inspectors were as follows: Doors opening inward; rubbish-piles under stairways and in basements; no means of egress from sides of buildings; basement-screens screwed to the window-frames; lack of fireproofing around steampipes and furnace-pipes; improper exits from galleries and choirs doors that, when opened, blocked stairways; heating apparatus installed beneath wooden stairs. This is the first general inspection of churches made in recent, years. “I am sure” said Commissioner 0 ’Hearn, “none of the violations of the fire hazard laws was wilful. They were simply the result of. neglect; and, possibly from a sense of security in the fact, there have been few fires in Boston churches.”