Fire Fighting-A
Cog In the Wheel of National Defense
AUBISON T. BURTSELL College of t h e City of New York, New York City
A
UNITED Press report from London, England, October 5, 1940, read: "Fifty men of the London Fire Brigade lost their lives fighting bombstarted fires last month, and 501 others were injured, some seriously." An article appearing in Lqe entitled, "London Fire Fighter," portrayed the activities of 30,000 members of the Auxiliary F i e Service who augment London's regular fire brigade. The members of this service receive four pounds a week and their keep, and devote all of their time to fighting fires started from incendiary bombs dropped on London. Frequently these duties are performed while under fire from machine guns, bombs, etc., and the risks are made especially dangerous because the location of the men is apparent from the light of the fires that they are fighting. Therefore, they are ready targets for aerial attacks. Daily press reports reveal that fighting fires in modern warfare is one of the most important defense activities. It is also significant that three men from New York City's Fire Department were recently sent to England to study fire-fighting activities there. During the past year, the author has developed a chemistry course in the Division of Public Service Training for students preparing for the' fire department in the city of New York. Since i t has been apparent that fire is a modern weapon of warfare, the Department of Chemistry a t the School of Business and Civic Administration has placed special emphasis on the fact that extinguishing a fire can be thought of as reversing or slowing down the reaction taking place in the combustion. All the methods for altering the speed of a chemical reaction apply to the reverse reaction as well as the forward reaction, hence it seems logical to teach fire fighting along these lines. Fire extinguishing involves, therefore, slowing the reaction by cooling or by decreasing the concentration of reacting materials, or both, which in turn involves nothing different from the same means of slowing any other chemical reaction. It is only necessary to slow the reaction down to the point where the heat liberated by the reaction is produced a t a slower rate than heat is lost to the environment; then the fire dies a natural death.
This approach bas been adopted by the author in teaching fire extinguishing to the students preparing in the Division of Public Service Training for fire department service. The students have previously learned the means of altering the rate of a chemical reaction, and this approach has stimulated exceptionally lively discussions, as well as a better understanding of the methods of fire fighting. The author feels that he is not presumptuous in taking this opportunity to call the attention of all teachers of chemistry throughout the United States to their obligation to teach to every student of chemistry the fundamentals of fire fighting, since this new weapon of defense is of prime importance in modern warfare. It seems obvious that in modern defense warfare every citizen must be alert to the danger of fire and prepared to extinguish, often single-handed, small fires before they grow large. This is a cardind rule in safety a t all times, and becomes more so in present-day warfare. Since the writer is meeting such success in fitting this type of work into the pattern of fundamental chemistry, it is further suggested that the task may be done without necessarily changing the courses already established in the various schools. A start in the right direction would be to use the reaction of combustion for illustrating the application of the means of altering the reaction rate. From the author's experience, it is predicted that if this approach is taken, the teacher will find that the students are anxious to continue this type of thought beyond the mere introduction of the idea; the teacher will find good reason to expand upon this topic as the individual circumstances permit. Since we are preparing for defense, we owe it to our country to teach every student passing through our hands more about fire extinguishing than is customary, so that this horrible weapon "fire" can be combated successfully. It is inevitable that, should this country be forced to defend itself from attack, every able-bodied citizen who knows something of fire fighting will be so much more of an asset. Chemistry students are the best fitted to learn fire fighting, and the author urges all his colleagues to accept the challenge before us. +
