Many cities had an assigned fire watch that patrolled the city at night on the look out for a fire. The community fire watch used this "fire bell" in the early days of Cincinnati to sound the community fire alarm. Hearing the sound of the bell, homeowners grabbed their buckets and headed to the fire to form a bucket brigade. Unfortunately, these early efforts at rapidly detecting and responding to a fire before it reached conflagration proportions were only marginally successful.

NOTE: This is an unformatted excerpt from our online fire protection training library.