Most fatal fires are caused by cigarettes, when people fall asleep holding them. A new European-wide regulation requires all cigarettes sold to be self-extinguishing. It went into effect last week.

Usually the firemen don’t have much firefighting to do in Paris. The buildings are fronted in stone and there are not nearly as many fires as in the wooden houses of the United States. Paris firemen also respond to medical emergencies and much of their work is taken up with that.

The long ladder was out and up against the building and the pompiers in their heavy coats and oxygen tanks were lining up canvas hoses in the street when I came out of a store, and water was pumping through the fat hoses. Clusters of people were standing on the corner looking up at the fifth and sixth floors above the stores, where black smoke was pouring out of windows on both floors. It was dark outside but the smoke was visible against the pale building. Inside the building you could see the eerie light from a fireman’s blue-white flashlight beam in the darkness. He came out on the balcony and looked down, then disappeared again into the smoky blackness.

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