Seacliff Fire

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23819, 12 December 1942, Page 4

Seacliff Fire

An inquiry will be held, as the Minister in charge of Mental Hospitals has announced, into the cause of the fire at Seacliff; and it may be taken for granted that the inquiry will extend to those factors, in the type, design, and equipment of the structure, which may have contributed to its result in a shocking death-roll. It is perhaps not to be taken for granted that this inquiry will extend to other institutional buildings—hospital, mental hospital, homes for the aged and infirm, orphanages, prisons, and the like—in which fire risks may be considered, for any reason, abnormally high; but it is not too soon to say that, if the evidence at Seacliff points to such a need, the wider inquiry should at once follow. The annexe destroyed within an hour or so at Seacliff was of wood, twostoreyed, and very old. The report from Dunedin suggests that the windows in only two rooms

were open or could be opened. From these rooms, two persons were saved; from the others, none. The building contained neither open fires nor electric radiators; it was steam-heated. These facts prompt questions which the inquiry may seek to answer: for instance, whether the risks of fire in an old, two-storeyed wooden building had been so well considered and guarded against that it could properly be used to house about 40 persons, and whether the danger of leading steam-heated pipes close to old woodwork had been avoided. But behind such particular questions lie larger ones: of the fire risk in other and similar old institutional buildings, and of their suitability, in general, for their purpose. The present Government, it should be acknowledged, has done much to speed and systematise a programme of mental hospital building and rebuilding. This had so fallen into arrears that, in 1935, nearly 1000 patients more than the maximum for which bed-space was provided were crowded into the hospitals. But the real position was worse than this figure indicates. The buildings were not distributed, diversified, or equipped to, serve the demands of classification and treatment. Many of them were very old and quite unsuitable. In the course of the next four or five years —until the war set up over-riding claims for labour and materials—considerable progress was made. Old buildings were demolished or renovated and new ones erected, with a net gain in accommodation and a greater gain in its utility; and organisational problems were cased. But progress was not nearly enough to overtake all arrears; not enough, even, to throw out of use all buildings which it was scandalous to use; not enough to prevent the problems of some institutions from becoming more serious, year by year. Real as the achievement of those years was, it hardly gave full assurance of the “ effcc- “ tive long-range programme ” which the director-general had called for in his report for the year 1935. Comparatively, it represented a smaller effort than was exerted in other directions, more conspicuous but less necessary. This disproportion, which reflects an historic political tendency in national works policy, has had an effect now intensified by the delays of the war. The mental hospitals are still using, because they must, far too many worn-out or unsuitable buildings. If the ScaclifT inquiry serves to emphasise this fact, and emphasise it as a fact of obligation, it will give a new impetus to progress.