MUCH REDUCED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 49, 27 February 1935, Page 10

MUCH REDUCED.

WORLD'S FIRE LOSSES. NEW ZEALAND 39 P.C. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

BLENHEIM, Tuesday

At the annual meeting of- the Fire Brigades' Officers and Members' Institute to-day, Mr. Zi. C. Gibbons, of Wellington, general secretary of the Underwriters' Council, and Mr. F. F. Gilmore, of Wellington, the council's chief electrical inspector, were present.

In an address, Mr. Gibbons remarked that it was a far cry from the days when the early insurance companies fitted out their firemen in livery. and equipped them with buckets to the new London machine, a streamlined car and a fire station on wheels. To illustrate the reduction in fire losses all over, the world, Sir. Gibbons stated that in the United Kingdom fire losses totalled £11,000,000 in 1929 and £8,500,000 in 1934, a reduction of 26.22 per cent. In the United States the losses for 11 months of 1932 were 403,000,000 dollars and for a similar period of 1934 252,000,000 dollars. ' / ■■ , In New Zealand the 1929 losses and expenses incidental thereto were £734,000, compared with £441,000 in 1933, 39 per cent decrease. Fire losses, like everything else, went in cycles, but when taken over a series of years, recent losses were below the average. Superintendent C. C. Warner,.. of Christchurch, was re-elected president of the institute.