The Conflagration-Hazard.
E. H. A. Correa, vicepresident of the Home Insurance company sees “in the general conditions that surround the construction and occupancy of the majority of our larger cities a certain danger that we must all be alive to. and one which naturally will lead to the possibilities from time to time of a recurrence of conflagrations. as the word is now used in insurance vocabulary. I11 our large mercantile centres we have two things to contend with. One is large area-risks as to flat surface, and the other large risks brought about by height. Both of these conditions I consider most dangerous. The expansion of business requires for the storage and display of merchandise large floor-space, and, when under the cld construction—which we all know is not of the very best in the majority of our cities, the walls being inadequate to resist the severe heat from a very combustible lot of contents—it is found necessary to create more space, there is no restriction placed upon openings between buildings making a single fire-hazard, and the snace thus created develoos a condition with which even our extremelv well equiped New York fire department quite often finds it difficult to cope in cases of fire. Added to the general mercantile congestion, when we take the severe hazards sometimes brought about by manufacturing establishments promiscuously interspersed between our high-valued risks in congested centres, we look, naturally, for a hazard from exposure that is most severe, and which we have found in the last few years almost impossible to cope with when a fire has been able to obtain a fairly good headway.”