BETTER OFFICES ADVOCATED FOR GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27402, 15 July 1954, Page 14

BETTER OFFICES ADVOCATED FOR GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS

Criticism of delay by the Government in providing suitable accommodation for staff of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Rotorua, and a warning that a fire hazard similar to the ones in the golfhouse offices at Rotorua and the Hope Gibbons building in 1951 existed in the head office of the Geological Survey at Wellington were given by Mr F. R. Callaghan, a former director of the department, in a statement to “The Press” yesterday. Mr Callaghan retired last year. “The loss sustained in last Saturday’s fire at Rotorua is a terrific one,” said Mr Callaghan, “because the work undertaken was along original lines in an area where volcanic activity occurs under conditions that are very different from those found in most other parts of the world.” Mr Callaghan said that the records in the Rotorua office had a bearing on the geothermal developments which were being planned in the area at present, as well as on longrange vulcanology, which had to be studied in a country where recent researches had shown that very extensive eruptions had taken place during the • Roman occupation of Britain. History of Rotorua Office “The Rotorua office was established in the early 1940’5, when the Government and the Rotorua borough were giving consideration to the extended uses of the thermal water supplies in the town of Rotorua, and sought the assistance of the department,’’ Mr Callaghan said. “The Tourist Department at that time offered the top floor of the Motutara golf pavilion to house the geologists who would be engaged on the work. “This accommodation was very small, and was regarded as unsatisfactory from the first. Immediately inquiries were made to secure other more suitable accommodation. These inquiries, however, were unsuccessful, and the department was obliged to look for a suitable site on which a building might be erected.

“Such a site was secured on the south end of Hospital Hill, where conditions were suitable for the installation of instruments to make seismic measurements.

“By this time, the vulcanological responsibilities of the Geological Survey were just getting into action when far greater responsibilities concerned with geothermal developments and the examination of dam sites had

to be undertaken by the survey,” Mr Callaghan said. “It became necessary for the Geophysical Survey to undertake. some of this work, and at a later stage a call was made by the Lands Department for soil surveys of the area between Taupo and Rotorua. “At times, officers of all three branches were actually accommodated in the golfhouse, but the building on the Hospital Hill site was planned to provide reasonable accommodation for all branches of the department,” he said.

The plans for the building had been approved by the Government just before the General Election in 1949, said Mr Callaghan. The new Government had decided not to proceed with the building, and since then the department had continually pressed the Government Accommodation Board for improved accommodation, but without avail. Offer off Privately-owned Building At one stage, a Rotorua firm of contractors had offered to erect a building for lease, but this offer had been declined by the Government, he said. Proposals had then been made for the erection of a departmental building in Rotorua which would house, together with other departments, the three branches of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. However, more recently the department had been notified that, because of a change in plans, it would no longer be accommodated in this building. “Thus more than 10 years of strong representations for improved accommodation for the Geological Survey at Rotorua have come to nought, except for the tragic fire which has now destroyed so much valuable scientific material,” Mr Callaghan said. “This loss will shock scientists throughout New Zealand, and will be especially disheartening to Mr J. W. Healey, and to the members of the Geological and Geophysical Survey staffs who have lost so much of the results of their work in the Rotorua district.

“The Geological Survey in 1952 sustained a loss through the fire in the Hope Gibbons building, Wellington. The Rotorua fire is the second unfortunate occurrence. The head office of the survey, housed in an old private residence in Wellington, in which congestion occurs, has constituted a fire risk for many years. In it are housed records and materials accumulated since the Geological Survey was established in 1865,” Mr Callaghan concluded.