By the 1860s, most of the populated cities had replaced the volunteer firefighters with and organization dedicated to the fear of loss of life and property through fire. Artisans–who were often the firefighters–would collect and converge on a fire at hand. There were many groups that would compete to tend to the fire, due to the fact that they would hold a barter with the property owner. By the time the negotiations were finished the fire would have grown high and wide. Through the organization of a committed fire department, that was controlled by the municipalities, the fires would be attended to with speed and attention. (Chudacoff p.50) They replaced the old and obsolete hand pumps with steam engines, to battle the fires in fast growing cities.
The development of a fire-fighting organization was definitely a step closer to developing a more stable society. I guess if they hadnt thought of that then we would still have wooden houses instead of brick buildings. It did take the people a while though to realize that fires were becoming a big problem, especially because it not only affects you but the surrounding buildings as well.
It was definitely awful the way they handled fires in the past. The fact that the private groups had so much power over the people because while their houses were on fire, they had to negotiate, which meant they have to listen to their demands. Even thought it is extremely greedy of the firefighters, they were only trying to make a living. It must have been a dangerous job too considering the firefighting methods back then.
Although I agree with much of the above, I disagree that fires were attended to with speed. I believe that there is a contradiction present. The firefighters would often argue with homeowners over the cost of putting out the fire and would indeed take a long time. Furthermore, relative to the time it now takes to get to a fire and put out a fire, the firefighters of the past were indeed slow.
i thought this was a very interesting piece on public services that are terribly needed in the cities. I did my post similar to this one where people were rioting, stealing , and killing. Nothing could’ve been done with the poor lack of police force and its the same deal when you have no fire department. If a house or area goes on fire then they will likely burn up the whole city because there is nobody to stop it. Even though groups of people would try and put out the fire they weren’t experts in the area.
Fighting fires has proven to be one of the most important aspects of running a healthy and safe city. Fires can break out anytime, anywhere and without proper attention they can pose disastrous consequences to an urban environment. With property so close together and thousands of people living in tight areas, one small fire can turn a city into a pile of rubble. I find it interesting that during the development of these volunteer firefighting organizations they would actually barter and come up with agreements while the fire was blazing. People would think that the most important thing would be extinguishing the flames and preventing loss of life, but there is always a business side to everything. This just goes to show that every system, when originally instituted, needs a great deal of work and tweaking to become efficient and effective.
I cannot even imagine a city or country where there were no fire fighter department. Because I live in New York City I often take many of the public services for granted. Reading the book and your posting was really an eye opener to how to system was back in the 1860’s.