Although in the 1830s the steamer pump driven fire engines had already been invented, but it is not until the 1860s that these fire engines were commercialized, which was mainly due to a variety of causes, including the rising labor cost, the fire service team, the attitude of major fire administration, insufficient water supply, lacking scientific and technological theory, the firefighting demand caused by the climate background, backward technology, incomplete supporting facilities and so on。 It is the global cooling climate in the 1830s whose climate was characterized by coldness, dryness, drought and haze, which led to more fires but less disasters, so the advantages of the pump is not obvious。 Thus the steamer pumps were not welcomed in the market in 1830s。 But in the 1860s, due to a global warming trend, the fire spread rapidly due to the severe wind。 In order to meet the needs of firefighting rapid fires, the steam fire engines caught people's attention, began to be popular。 In 1890s, due to the another cooling cycle, cold climate came back once again, which led to another round of fire season and promoted the steamer pump to be self-driven。 The representative product is the model Fireking which was introduced into Shanghai in 1908。 By the 1920s, the climate became warm again which resulted in the escalation of conflagrations。 But this time, the inherent shortcomings of those steamers such as large footage, the slow warm-up, complex maintenance and service, and so on, were intolerable。 At the same time, with the invention of gasoline motors, motor pumps gradually replaced the steamer pumps in 1920s in the western world。
There are many other reasons besides the fire characteristics caused by the climate。 At that time the fire plug just appeared, the water supply capacity is limited, which leads to the fact that the steamer pump did not have the effective water supply system。 In 1830, the manpower was cheap, so there were enough people to fight the fire, but as the cost of manpower increased, steamer pumps were gradually introduced。 In addition, at that time people also thought that the steam fire engine is an insult to their masculinity and at the same time the firefighting management system did not support the introduction of steamer pump。 There is also another implicit reason that is the bottleneck of theoretical development, when people have not yet recognized the Carnot cycle or other thermodynamic theory for improving the efficiency。
1。1 Research background and significance
Presently, China is experiencing the rapid economic and social transformation with various disaster factors increased significantly。 Major fires and other types of disasters have occurred and their scale continues to grow。 The newly revised "Fire Protection Law of the People's Republic of China" has further expanded the functions of the fire brigade which made the task of the firefighting more complex and strenuous。 Facing a complex firefighting and rescue situation, a problem that the proportion of casualties are gradually increasing in China's vast number of fire officers and soldiers in the fire and rescue cannot be ignored。(李来保, 2009)
Table 1。1 Cause distribution of the fatal Incidents of Firemen in 2005-2013(程姝雯, 2015)
Sacrifice category The number of sacrifices The proportion of the total number of deaths
Fall 6 8%
Traffic Accident 8 10。67%
Explosion 10 13。33%
Poisoning 11 14。67%
electric shock