GREATER NEW YORK FIRE NOTES.

On Sunday week the "three-five” call summoning, as a test, the sappers' and miners’ corps of the fire department was sounded for the first time in its history of more than twenty years. No notice had been given beforehand of the call, which caused great excitement in the firehouses, it summons the lieutenants—assistant foremen—of the department of Manhattan and The Bronx, who make up the corps. There are four battalions, A, B, C and D, in the company, which is used for handling dynamite in case of a conflagration. Those composing that portion of the corps which was called out responded very promptly.— To show the value of giving the firemen instruction in "first aid,” the good work done by Fireman Vellosa the other day, when Fireman John H. Gleason, of truck No. 28, improvised a tourniquet just above the knee of John H. Gleason, of truck No. 28, who was struck and cut by a falling piece of plateglass, when working at a fire. The flow of blood was successfully stopped, and the man’s life was certainly saved by his comrade’s skill and presence of mind.—The new city fireboat Cornelius B. Lawrence is now ready to receive her engines. She makes the tenth in the service of the New York fire department. The new boat is considerably shorter than the others, but will have as strong pumping powers, being designed for close-quarter work. She can be handled more quickly and more readily than the other boats and can get into places where some of the others are barred. Her length is too ft.; her beam, 22; her depth, 8 ft. Cornelius W. Lawrence, after whom she was named by Miss May Lantry, daughter of the fire commissioner, was mayor of New York in 1834. The other two new fireboats are now having their pumps installed.—A small fire broke out in the shop of a metal worker at 82 West Third street, Manhattan, caused by an explosion of oil and enamels. George Oettinger, the seventeen-year-old apprentice, was trying to put out the fire with sand, when a secmid explosion filled the basement room with heavy fumes and drove him from the shop. He re xumed operations, however, and directed the firemen skilfully, acting as their guide during their operations in the smoke-filled shop. By their united efforts they quenched the fire in a very few minutes. The fire-patrol house is next door. More than a score of girls, who worked upstairs in an artificial flower factory, escaped through the smoke.On November 4 the firemen of Manhattan had to fight two two-alarm fires within four hours. One was on the second floor of a fivestory. brick tenement at 206 West One Hundred and Twenty-first street, which caused a loss of $10,000. The other was on the top story of the four-story, brick building 13 Marion street, owned hv the city of New York, The loss was $15,000. Kach fire took place in the small hours of the morning. The dome of the Singer building at Liberty street and Broadway, Manhattan—-at pres ent the highest dome in the world—is being fireproofed. Terra-cotta bricks are used for the purpose. On the dome will be used 8,500 ft. of fireproof hollow tile, in addition to the 230,000 sq. ft. of that same material that have been used for the floors and the 412 sq. ft. in the partitions. In the whole building, so far as the structural part is concerned, hardly a bushel of combustible stuff has been used. A fireboat might have been summoned by wireless telegraphy to be in readiness to extinguish a fire in the British ship Abelour, from Japan to China, laden with wool, hemp, matting and tea, which had caught fire at sea. But no such service was needed, for, as soon as the fire was discovered, the tops of the ventilators were removed and canvas was lashed over the open ends. The Clayton marine fire-extin guishing apparatus, with which the ship was equiped, was set to work Carbon dioxide—firedamp.was generated and forced into the hold. while at the same time a pump on the starboard ode was started to exhaust the air from the hold. She was towed up the East River to the pier at the foot of Rutgers street, with the dioxide and air-pump still working, and the fire being choked out by the carbon dioxide, as was proved by the temperature of the steel plates on deck having fallen from 187° to 8o°. A spark from a tug is supposed to have made its way through one of the ventilators into the combustible cargo.—Dating the twenty-four hours of Election Day the fire patrolmen of the city answered ten false alarms, twentyone for bonfires, and twenty-seven of the ordinary kind. — The Old Dominion steamship Jefferson, when off Long Branch sent a wireless message for the assistance of a fireboat when she inade the entrance to New York harbor. The McClellan met her and had everything ready for the immediate landing of her forty passengers. Meanwhile, with all the hatches battened down over the cargo of cotton, the captain raced past Quarantine and up the North River to the ship’s pier at the foot of Ball street, accompanied by the fireboat. The passengers, who knew nothing of what was going on, were safely landed, and the McClellan's men got on board. They had little to do, however, as only one bale of cotton had been on fire, and that had been extinguished by turning the steam Into the hold Ions' before the pier had been reached.—The borough of Queens could not have had a very robust body of men as volunteer firemen under the old system, as only eight of them were passed by the medical board into the city’s paid fire department.—At Newtown, borough of Queens, the volunteer fire department, under Chief Herman Ringe, has elected two battalion chiefs, David Avernius and Henry Koenig, in place of Frederick Held and David Van Hise respectively.—Mayor McClellan has sent a particular request to the proper authorities to raise the salary of Chief Croker from $7,000 to $10,000 a year.—The Bronx keeps up its opposition to the proposed new building code. According to that code, which has been unanimously adopted by the code revision committee, after January 1, no new building shall be over 250 ft. in height—a height exceeded, in some cases far exceeded by over forty of the skyscrapers in the city. These, of course, will not be affected by the new regulations. There seems every reason for believing that the new code will be passed by the aldermen and the board of estimate and that it will finally become law. For the future, also, all boadinghouses, lodgerooms, concert halls, garages and church buildings must be made fireproof. The members of the committee which devised the new laws are the following: Charles G. Smith (chairman); Charles H. Israels: Electns D. Litchfield; Thomas L. Hamilton; Theodere Starrett: and Chief Edward F. Croker.

On Sunday week the "three-five” call summoning, as a test, the sappers' and miners’ corps of the fire department was sounded for the first time in its history of more than twenty years. No notice had been given beforehand of the call, which caused great excitement in the firehouses, it summons the lieutenants—assistant foremen—of the department of Manhattan and The Bronx, who make up the corps. There are four battalions, A, B, C and D, in the company, which is used for handling dynamite in case of a conflagration. Those composing that portion of the corps which was called out responded very promptly.— To show the value of giving the firemen instruction in "first aid,” the good work done by Fireman Vellosa the other day, when Fireman John H. Gleason, of truck No. 28, improvised a tourniquet just above the knee of John H. Gleason, of truck No. 28, who was struck and cut by a falling piece of plateglass, when working at a fire. The flow of blood was successfully stopped, and the man’s life was certainly saved by his comrade’s skill and presence of mind.—The new city fireboat Cornelius B. Lawrence is now ready to receive her engines. She makes the tenth in the service of the New York fire department. The new boat is considerably shorter than the others, but will have as strong pumping powers, being designed for close-quarter work. She can be handled more quickly and more readily than the other boats and can get into places where some of the others are barred. Her length is too ft.; her beam, 22; her depth, 8 ft. Cornelius W. Lawrence, after whom she was named by Miss May Lantry, daughter of the fire commissioner, was mayor of New York in 1834. The other two new fireboats are now having their pumps installed.—A small fire broke out in the shop of a metal worker at 82 West Third street, Manhattan, caused by an explosion of oil and enamels. George Oettinger, the seventeen-year-old apprentice, was trying to put out the fire with sand, when a secmid explosion filled the basement room with heavy fumes and drove him from the shop. He re xumed operations, however, and directed the firemen skilfully, acting as their guide during their operations in the smoke-filled shop. By their united efforts they quenched the fire in a very few minutes. The fire-patrol house is next door. More than a score of girls, who worked upstairs in an artificial flower factory, escaped through the smoke.On November 4 the firemen of Manhattan had to fight two two-alarm fires within four hours. One was on the second floor of a fivestory. brick tenement at 206 West One Hundred and Twenty-first street, which caused a loss of $10,000. The other was on the top story of the four-story, brick building 13 Marion street, owned hv the city of New York, The loss was $15,000. Kach fire took place in the small hours of the morning. The dome of the Singer building at Liberty street and Broadway, Manhattan—-at pres ent the highest dome in the world—is being fireproofed. Terra-cotta bricks are used for the purpose. On the dome will be used 8,500 ft. of fireproof hollow tile, in addition to the 230,000 sq. ft. of that same material that have been used for the floors and the 412 sq. ft. in the partitions. In the whole building, so far as the structural part is concerned, hardly a bushel of combustible stuff has been used. A fireboat might have been summoned by wireless telegraphy to be in readiness to extinguish a fire in the British ship Abelour, from Japan to China, laden with wool, hemp, matting and tea, which had caught fire at sea. But no such service was needed, for, as soon as the fire was discovered, the tops of the ventilators were removed and canvas was lashed over the open ends. The Clayton marine fire-extin guishing apparatus, with which the ship was equiped, was set to work Carbon dioxide—firedamp.was generated and forced into the hold. while at the same time a pump on the starboard ode was started to exhaust the air from the hold. She was towed up the East River to the pier at the foot of Rutgers street, with the dioxide and air-pump still working, and the fire being choked out by the carbon dioxide, as was proved by the temperature of the steel plates on deck having fallen from 187° to 8o°. A spark from a tug is supposed to have made its way through one of the ventilators into the combustible cargo.—Dating the twenty-four hours of Election Day the fire patrolmen of the city answered ten false alarms, twentyone for bonfires, and twenty-seven of the ordinary kind. — The Old Dominion steamship Jefferson, when off Long Branch sent a wireless message for the assistance of a fireboat when she inade the entrance to New York harbor. The McClellan met her and had everything ready for the immediate landing of her forty passengers. Meanwhile, with all the hatches battened down over the cargo of cotton, the captain raced past Quarantine and up the North River to the ship’s pier at the foot of Ball street, accompanied by the fireboat. The passengers, who knew nothing of what was going on, were safely landed, and the McClellan's men got on board. They had little to do, however, as only one bale of cotton had been on fire, and that had been extinguished by turning the steam Into the hold Ions' before the pier had been reached.—The borough of Queens could not have had a very robust body of men as volunteer firemen under the old system, as only eight of them were passed by the medical board into the city’s paid fire department.—At Newtown, borough of Queens, the volunteer fire department, under Chief Herman Ringe, has elected two battalion chiefs, David Avernius and Henry Koenig, in place of Frederick Held and David Van Hise respectively.—Mayor McClellan has sent a particular request to the proper authorities to raise the salary of Chief Croker from $7,000 to $10,000 a year.—The Bronx keeps up its opposition to the proposed new building code. According to that code, which has been unanimously adopted by the code revision committee, after January 1, no new building shall be over 250 ft. in height—a height exceeded, in some cases far exceeded by over forty of the skyscrapers in the city. These, of course, will not be affected by the new regulations. There seems every reason for believing that the new code will be passed by the aldermen and the board of estimate and that it will finally become law. For the future, also, all boadinghouses, lodgerooms, concert halls, garages and church buildings must be made fireproof. The members of the committee which devised the new laws are the following: Charles G. Smith (chairman); Charles H. Israels: Electns D. Litchfield; Thomas L. Hamilton; Theodere Starrett: and Chief Edward F. Croker.

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