'LURKING DEATH.'

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 271, 15 November 1937, Page 9

'LURKING DEATH.'

DEADLY ELECTRICITY.

N.S.W. TRAGEDIES.

GOVERNMENT TAKES ACTION. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 11. From time to time some tragic occurrence draws public attention to the danger to human life which has always lurked behind electrical appliances and wires. In August two shocking accidents of this sort aroused alarm and produced an agitation for some systematic action by the authorities in the public defence. A brilliant young journalist, Ronald Burns, lost his life at Newcastle through using a faulty electric iron, and about the same week a seven-year-old boy, climbing on the roof of his father's house at Rochdale, touched an overhead wire and was electrocuted on the soot.

The demand from all quarters that something should be done by the Government to minimise such risks as these was met with the official assurance that the Safety Advisory Committee set up two years ago was hard at work on the matter and that results would soon be forthcoming.

This was at least encouraging, but no active steps had yet been taken when last week public optimism on this subject received a serious shock. Within eight days no less than seven people were killed by accidental electric discharges, and the facts as published by the "Sydney Morning Herald" and other papers caused a great outcry for prompt action on the part of the State. Tragic List. An elderly man working in a manhole in the ceiling of his mother's house; a workman who touched a hawser in contact with a high tension wire; a woman using an electric jug; a man handling a sheet of galvanised iron which swung against a live wire at Bondi; a man using an electric drill at Newcastle; a man using an electric boring machine on the new suspension bridge at Northbridge; a woman hanging clothes on a metal line which struck against a power wire—all these fell victims to "the lurking death" in the short space of one week, and it is not surprising that the Government had at once to face a concerted outcry from many quarters at once, without any clear conception of a definite policy, that "something must be done."

The problems which the Safety Advisory Committee has been attempting to solve for the past two years concern danger arising mainly from two distinct sources —wires transmitting power and household utensils employing it. As regards transmission wires, which theoretically, when they enter houses, are always insulated, the trouble is that the insulation soon pevishce and the wires unless consistently examined and protected, become "live" sources of danger to all who may come in contact with them. New Ordinances. As to household utensils, defects in construction, caretees usage and the recklessness born of ignorance are quite sufficient in conjunction to account for the many shocking accidents that they have caused.

An effective attempt to protect the general public from such dangers must cover both of these fields, and the Government now proposes to make an effort in both these directions. Mr. Spooner, as Minister of Works and Local Government, has now announced that two new ordinances are to be gazetted—one dealing with the specifications of electrical appliances so as to ensure public safety, the other relating to the inspection of installations by firms which supply and install electrical appliances. Both of these ordinances involve a very large amount of trouble and expense, if they are to be really effective. The Standards Association has been called on to examine and check the specifications for domestic utensils, and the ordinances will set forth in an immense multiplicity of detail the main features to be" insisted upon in the construction and equipment of toasters, grillers, radiators, heaters, kettles, saucepans, jugs, irons and circuit breakers.

The amount of meticulous work required to make such regulations complete in all details is quite sufficient to account for the length of time that the Advisory Committee has devoted to the matter.

The second ordinance provides that a supplier of electricity must make an inspection of all his installations once every four years. As there are hundreds of thousands of installations in the county of Cumberland (our "Home" county) alone, it can be imagined that the task indicated will be a gigantic one. The Sydney County Council alone will need to make 200 inspections a day five days a week for five years, and then start all over again.

This will mean the training of hundreds of inspectors and the elaboration of a system which must take many years and large sums, of public money to perfect. But these ordinances are definite steps in the right direction, and Mr. Spooner is, no doubt, justified in assuming that the knowledge of these official activities will induce a very large. number of people to use greater care and display less recklessness in handling electrical appliances than ever before.