Fire Safety in Public Buildings
By R.
The St. John’s Parochial School at Peabody, Massachusetts, recently burned, was a brick and frame building not provided with fire escapes. The doors of the building opened inward; and of the six hundred children who had just entered the building for the morning session, at least 20 were burned to death or crushed under the feet of their struggling comrades, who had massed against these doors, making it difficult to open them. Building laws should make such accidents impossible. It seems incredible, with the Collingwood horror in mind, that responsible officials anywhere could permit an inward-opening door ever again to menace the human life behind it. No building more than two stories in height in which people gather for any purpose should be unprotected by fire escapes and outward-opening doors. Notwithstanding this condition, we believe Massachusetts has a law against inward-opening doors. R.