Proclamation 2700—Fire Prevention Week, 1946

Whereas fires threaten this year to exact the greatest toll of lives and the greatest waste of material resources that our nation has ever experienced; and

Whereas this destruction is taking place at a time when the entire world is faced with distressing shortages of food and housing and nearly every commodity essential to speedy reconversion to a peacetime economy; and

Whereas the vast majority of destructive fires are preventable by the exercise of greater caution on the part of all our citizens:

Now, Therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the week beginning October 6, 1946, as Fire Prevention Week.

I ask every citizen to do his part by learning how to detect and eliminate all possible causes of fires in his home and in his business, in order to safeguard both lives and property from the holocaust of fire. I also request that the State and local governments, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the National Fire Waste Council, business and labor organizations, the churches and schools, civic groups, and the agencies of the press, the radio, and the motion-picture industry throughout the country cooperate fully in the observance of Fire Prevention Week; and I direct that the appropriate agencies of the Federal Government likewise assist in arousing the public to the awareness of the dread threat of fires.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this 3rd day of September in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and seventy-first.

HARRY S. TRUMAN

By the President:

W. L. CLAYTON,

Acting Secretary of State.