ADDRESS, GOVERNOR'S CONFERENCE

ON FIRE PREVENTION
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

August 11, 1959

I have asked you to come here to this conference to consider a matter
of tremendous significance to all of us—the safety of the lives and prop-
erty of the people of Maryland.

You have been invited to these discussions because you are highly
qualified by experience, training and aptitude to make a valuable con-
tribution to the solution of a problem we face in Maryland and else-
where. I speak of fire prevention and fire protection. It is our purpose
here to give serious, intelligent thought to fire safety, with the hope and
expectation that means will be found to strengthen our program of
prevention.

High on the list of my objectives as Governor is to give our citizens a
greater security against the hazards they encounter daily in their homes,
at work and in travel. I should think that most of you have read or
heard of our program of traffic safety, which includes the point system
for penalizing careless drivers and chemical tests for the operators of
motor vehicles accused of drunken driving. These new laws, together
with stepped-up enforcement of all the traffic laws in our statute books,
we hope will be effective in the reduction of the shocking rate of deaths
and injuries through accidents on our highways.

We hear and read much about traffic safety. Traffic safety is widely
promoted and highly publicized. The same cannot be said of fire safety,
for one reads and hears little about the number of lives lost and the
amount of property destroyed in fires. This, I think, is most unfor-
tunate....

Fire statistics in Maryland are not quite so spectacular and hair-
raising as are the figures on traffic mishaps. Ninety-two persons died in
fires in the State last year, as compared with the 505 highway accident
fatalities. But we cannot, in good conscience, be complacent about the
deaths of 92 persons in fires which could have been, and should have
been, prevented. During the fall, winter and early spring months espe-
cially, one reads in newspapers too frequently of entire families being
wiped out by fires.

The State Insurance Commissioner F. Douglass Sears, I am informed,
soon will issue a report stating that the total insured property loss from
fires in Maryland last year was $10, 958, 000. That, we may be thankful,

251