9781422280256

F ire has always been important in everyday life. It provides warmth and security, but it can also be dangerous and destructive. In prehistoric times, it was used to warm caves and cook food; big fires were lit at night at the entrance to the caves so that wild ani-

mals would be frightened away. However, fires can also burn out of control, burning down entire forests, or turning houses and other buildings into smoking ashes. Fire can kill people by burn- ing them to death or by choking them with the smoke it creates. Fires in the Cities

Recording of 9/11 firefighters’ last moments.

The danger of fire became even greater some 6,000 years ago when people began to live in cities in and around Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. The ancient Egyptians were well aware of this and used hand-operated wooden pumps to put out fires in the second century BCE. The problem in the ancient cities was that people lived close together: they had their own fires and cooking stoves, so a single outbreak of fire could quickly spread, destroying homes and killing people. In the towns and cities of the ancient Roman Empire, this happened all too often in badly built, overcrowded three- or four-story apartment blocks called insulae , or islands.

Words to Understand

Insulae: Roman apartment blocks. Conflagration: Large destructive fire. Firebreaks: Area of land that has had plants and trees removed to stop the spread of fire.

P utting O ut F ires : F irefighters

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