How America cut deadly city fires in half

My family lives in a heavily-trafficked part of Brooklyn, and most nights you’ll hear the occasional whine of fire engine sirens through our living room window. But the torrent of sirens early on the morning of September 17 was enough to briefly rouse me from bed.

I found out later that day that a five-alarm fire involving more than 200 firefighters had ripped through a 150-year-old artists’ warehouse in the neighboring area of Red Hook. It was one of the biggest New York has experienced this year, and though no one was killed, the work of more than 500 artists may have been destroyed.

The Red Hook fire was a tragedy for New York’s already struggling artistic community, but it got me thinking about the state of urban fires in the US today. As long as cities have existed, fires have been