PERIL OF FIRES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 272, 16 November 1937, Page 7

PERIL OF FIRES.

INCENDIARY BOMBS.

Handpump, Shovel and Sand for

Householders.

LAUGHTER OF OPPOSITION.

United Press Association.—Copyright.

(Received 2 p.m.) LONDON, November 15

Dealing in his speech in the House of Commons on air raid precautions, Sir Samuel Hoare dealt with the matter of incendiary bombs.

He said that enough attention had not been given this danger. A mediumsized bomber could start 150 separate fires from small incendiary bombe. It was essential that some mean* should be evolved to extinguish them as soon as they started.

It was intended to provide householders with advice on how to deal with one of these bombs whon dropped.

"We have been making a series of very interesting experiments with a view to providing householders, at very small expense, with a hand pump, shovel and box of sand."

There was some Opposition laughter, but Sir Samuel continued: "Members may laugh, but experts believe that even a simple apparatus of this kind, if used quickly, will be efficacious in preventing fires spreading and a conflagration arising in great centres of population like the county of London." New Types of Fire Engines. The Air Raids . Precautions Department had been experimenting with new types of fire engines, with the object of obtaining greater mobility than was possible in the past. The only way to deal with a large number of fires was to have such mobility. Machines would I be constantly patrolling the streets.

Three types had been considered, including a small and very mobile machine, rather a trailer car type, carrying not only a means of fire extinction but an emergency supply of water.

The Government proposed to supply these for local authorities hi all cases.

Dr. Hayden Guest said that in congested areas thousands of people would pour into the streets for shelter, exposing themselves to slaughter before reaching the shelters. People around the docks would be exposed to bombing on a wholesale scale. They should be evacuated.

Mr. Stephen Campbell (1.L.P., Glasgow) said evacuation wae largely impossible. Millions of people in the East End would not take buses for South Wales.