AIR RAID RISKS

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 239, 9 October 1935, Page 6

AIR RAID RISKS

PRECAUTIONS IN ENGLAND,

The newly-established Air Raid Precautions Department of the Home Office published recently the firet of a series of memoranda. It advised local authorities how to provide first-aid and hospital treatment for air-raid casualties, and also the means of decontaminating persons who have had contact with poisonous fumes whether needing medical treatment or not (says "The Times"). r lhe organisation will differ greatly according to the area. Country districts require far less detailed preparation than densely populated urban areas. It is an elementary maxim that in thinly populated areas gas attacks are not only unlikely to be effective, but also unlikely to be attempted. It is in the urban areas that the most likely targets for high explosive bombs are to be found and where the greatest injury may be inflicted by gas. It was a principle of the original Home Office circular that the construction of new buildings or of vast underground refuges was impracticable. The provision on an extensive scale of shelters, it was explained, could only be obtained by means of concrete structuies of great thickness or by correspondingly expensive works of equivalent strength, the cost of which would be prohibitive. The Government has therefore made it clear that it cannot undertake to provide money towards the construction of public bomb-proof shelters. On the other hand, effective protection a/gainst blast and splinters from bombs can be obtained at a comparatively small cost; and it is left to occupiers of premises to provide this defence for themselves and their households. The respective responsibilities laid down by the Home Office are that the action of the Government itself should cover warnings in the event of air raids, general arrangements for lighting restrictions, the accumulation of stocks of respirators and protective clothing for the A.R.P. services, the accumulation of reserves of the powder necessary for gas decontamination, arrangements for training instructors in anti-gas measures, and technical advice to local authorities, employers in _ industry, householders and the general public. Local authorities are made responsible for schemes for first-aid and hospital treatment, the provision of rescue parties and of emergency communication systems, for the maintenance of essential ptibiic services, for the recruitment of personnel, and for the organisation, in conjunction with the Order of St. John and the British Red Ciws Society, of public lectures and courses of instruction. Action is expectcd to 'be taken by employers in industry for protecting their premises and all persons in them from the effects of bombs and gas, and for the organisation of fire squads and first-aid services. The general public should learn means of protecting themselves and their houses from the effects of bombs and gas and learn simple rules of conduct during air raids and in cases of injury or gas contamination. Much of this work has already been taken in hand by the Red Cross societies.

In all these preparations there is no sign that the Government foresees any risk of war in the near future. Similar precautions have already been taken by most European nations, several of which have held dummy air raids and obliged the inhabitants of large cities to plunge their houses into darkness and to take refuge in cellars. In present circumstances it is certainly advisable that the public should become familiar with the elementary principles of protection against gas and bombing. In London, for instance, it must be realised that the tube system does not afford a proper shelter against gas; and everybody ought to know how useful hot water and a change of clothing can be for the purpose of decontamination. A whole series of further handbooks is planned. The Government is right to issue them; but the ultimate protection against such horrors as they contemplate must lio elsewhere. Public opinion in all countries must come to regard any nation resorting to bombing as an outlaw, and by a series of air conventions between neighbours aggression in the nir must he rendered liable to such overwhelming retaliation as to become an act of self-destruction.