Some History of how Volunteer Fire Department's came
into existence.
Once
fire was discovered, it was used regularly. Respect for it decreased
and fires were often left unattended. With this, many disastrous
and tragic experiences have taught us the dangers of this lack of attention.
With this, regulations, different safety measures and precautions were
taken to reduce the hazard. People also discovered that they had
to develop ways to protect themselves and what they owned when a fire broke
out of control or ignited something accidentally.
The
first organized fire fighting force that can be traced in history was established
in Rome by Augustus Caesar around 23 BC. Moved to action by a bad
fire, Augustus established a body of 600 men belonging to the, “servants
of the commonwealth,” and had them stationed near the city gates.
As slaves, they had few rights in the society in which they were forced
to live.
After another bad fire in AD 6, Augustus formed
a corps of professional fire fighters known as the watchmen. These
were freeman, divided into seven battalions of 1,000 men each and commanded
by the emperor (he is the direct ancestor of today's fire chief).
The watchmen were distributed throughout the city. The cost of maintaining
the corps was paid by the public treasury, and every fire prompted an official
inquiry. When a fire was judged to be the result of negligence, the
careless citizen was punished.
Through
the centuries the story has been told of the cruel, obese, and truculent
Emperor Nero who “fiddled as Rome burned.” However true this description,
Nero was apparently a man of vision and intelligence who fully recognized
the dangers of unregulated construction. Before his reign, Rome had
expended its wealth and resources on the construction of public edifices.
Unfortunately, sound principles of construction were ignored in almost
all other buildings.
It
is interesting to note that even before the great conflagration Nero had
a master plan for the development of a new city. Immediately after
the fire, reconstruction began. Nero’s attitude toward conditions
existing in Rome before the fire were well known, and accusations that
he ordered the incineration have seemed well founded to some historians.
Nevertheless, Nero must be credited with reconstructing Rome in accordance
with sound principles of construction, sanitation, and utility. From
that time until the fall of Rome, both public and private building was
closely regulated.
The earliest known code of law regulating building
construction is that of Hammurabi, founder of the Babylonian empire.
Here is one of them, #229: If a builder has built a house for a man
and his work is not strong, and if the house he has built falls in and
kills the householder, that builder shall be slain.
