Fire Safety In Many Dunedin Hotels Poor

Press, Volume C, Issue 29536, 10 June 1961, Page 12

Fire Safety In Many Dunedin Hotels Poor

(New Zealand Press Association)

DUNEDIN, June 9. Unless a considerable number of Dunedin hotels are brought up to standard in fire and safety requirements, the licensees will be called on to show reasons why their licences should not be suspended. This warning was issued by the chairman, Mr J. D. Willis, S.M.. at the annual meeting today of the Dunedin City Licensing Committee, when the committee refused in the meantime to issue dr renew 21 of a total of 51 licences. The hotels concerned ranged from lower grade suburban houses to hotels with the highest grading in Dunedin. Hearing of applications was adjourned for three months to permit the improvements to be made. The committee. Messrs Willis, S. B. Jacobs, A. S. Hancock, H. A. Newall and G. W. Lane, warned that few hotels conformed fully with certain elementary requirements of fire safety. “If these requirements are not fully attended to immediately, so much the worse for them," Mr Willis said. The main deficiencies were that the hotels had inadequate emergency lighting or none at all, lack of egress in the event of fire, or unsatisfactory fire alarm systems. “We are at a loss to understand why they have not been attended to before, and why report* have been furnished in the past that everything in that connexion has been satisfactory," Mr Willis said. The police representative. | Chief Inspector D. M. Camp*

bell, agreed that this indicated that past inspections could not have been made satisfactorily. Other matters reported. Mr Willis said, were that smoke stop doors were not always kept closed in hotels. In the event of fire serious consequences could follow. In one hotel, when the fire brigade arrived to a false alarm at 3 a.m. the stop doors were found to be hooked back. In a fire they would have been useless. In some cases fire alarms were not operating. Licensees would be well advised to take this up immediately. There would be no second warning.