Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 199, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1917 — Home Town Helps [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Home Town Helps

BAD ROOFING FIRE DANGER Investigation Into Causes of Big Atlanta Conflagration Lays Blame on General Use of Shingles. Following the Atlanta conflagration of May 21, 1917, the committee on Are prevention of the national board of lire underwriters dispatched one of its most experienced engineers to the stricken city in order to make a close study of the characteristics of the fire, the causes to which it was due and the lessons which might be deduced from it. • The report finds that the Atlanta disaster was essentially a “shingleroof’ conflagration of the familiar type; it questions the utility of the dynamiting of buildings and records the fact that some of the hose sent from nearby cities could not be used through lack of standardized couplings. The report's greatest emphasis, however, is laid upon bad roofing conditions, which are summed up in the following statement: This conflagration, together with two of the other fires occurring at the same time, emphasizes the ease with which spreading fires may develop in cities where wooden shingle roofs predominate, eveq when the fire department is mainly well equipped' and manned. It illustrates the startling suddenness with which such a fire may grow into a conflagration under favorable conditions.