LAFD Video: Report Fire Promptly! Dial 1-1-6 Or Break the Glass

"How can we help you fight fires," demands the narrator, "if you don't call us promptly? Dial 1-1-6!"  Apparently 9-1-1 is the new 1-1-6.  Who knew?

Welcome to a another brief video excerpt from the same treasure trove of vintage moving images that houses "."  

Happily, it's another Los Angeles Fire Department production, "Your Fire Department," which plods through modern marvels like "direct wire" telephone connections, two-way radios and oxygen tanks for "inevitable" suicide attempts.

Fire station are placed where the value of property is the highest, we learn, and wonder how much has changed.

There's also mention of the lowest rank of firefighter –salvage men, whose job it was to put tarps over your divan to avoid water damage and build little dikes with sawdust to prevent floods.  

They also mop up your living room after the other firemen leave. Where are these guys now?

You'll get a nice 60-year old view of KHJ radio, funny fedoras and a city full of Anglos if you make it through the narcotic script, the bombastic announcer and asleep-at-the-wheel direction.

The half-hour video is split in two: Click here for the first part; and here for the second.

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Apparently, I may have stumbled on some history with this dial 1-1-6 film clip. 

The film is now cited in Wikipedia as documenting perhaps the very first dedicated emergency phone number.