Kitchen Range Explosions and Church Fires During Cold Weather
There is an “epidemic” of kitchen range explosions, and a “carnival” of church burning. In Cincinnati, the bursting of kitchen ranges or rather of the hot water pipes, was almost as deadly as the cannonading of Paris during any one day of the siege. One servant girl was killed, and two or three injured. There were four such occurrences in Cincinnati, one in Cleveland, and one in Harrisburg. On Sunday, a church was partly burned down in Cincinnati. Dr. Talmage’s church, in Brooklyn, with walls of iron, was consumed, and two churches in Rhode Island were partially destroyed. The cause is obvious: Frozen pipes in the kitchen and very hot fires in the churches. These occurrences, depending as they do upon the weather, ought to be included in the “probabilities,” and the range of the kitchen ranges thus exposed, mapped out every morning, although one would suppose that the premonitory evidence of cold weather now furnished might give a hint as to the necessity of shutting off the water.