Once fire was discovered, it was used regularly. Respect for it decreased and fires were often left unattended.

With this many disastrous and tragic experiences have taught us the dangers of this lack of attention.

With this, regulations, different safety measures and precautions were taken to reduce the hazard. People also discovered that they had to develop ways to protect themselves and what they owned when a fire broke out of control or ignited something accidentally.

The first organized fire fighting force that can be traced in history was established in Rome by Augustus Caesar around 23 BC. Moved to action by a bad fire, Augustus established a body of 600 men belonging to the familia publica, “servants of the commonwealth,” and had them stationed near the city gates. As slaves, they had few rights in the society in which they were forced to live.

After another bad fire in AD 6, Augustus formed a corps of professional fire fighters known as the vigiles (watchmen). These were freeman, divided into seven battalions (cohortes) of 1,000 men each and commanded by the praefectus emperor (he is the direct ancestor of today’s fire chief). The vigiles were distributed throughout the city. The cost of maintaining the corps was paid by the public treasury, and every fire prompted an official inquiry. When a fire was judged to be the result of negligence, the careless citizen was punished.

Through the centuries the story has been told of the cruel, obese, and truculent Emperor Nero who “fiddled as Rome burned.” However true this description, Nero was apparently a man of vision and intelligence who fully recognized the dangers of unregulated construction. Before his reign, Rome had expended its wealth and resources on the construction of public edifices. Unfortunately, sound principles of construction were ignored in almost all other buildings.

It is interesting to note that even before the great conflagration Nero had a master plan for the development of a new city. Immediately after the fire, reconstruction began. Nero’s attitude toward conditions existing in Rome before the fire were well known, and accusations that he ordered the incineration have seemed well-founded to some historians. Nevertheless, Nero must be credited with reconstructing Rome in accordance with sound principles of construction, sanitation, and utility. From that time until the fall of Rome, both public and private building was closely regulated.

EARLY BUILDING CODES