Gas tank for garage rejected

Press, 2 December 1978, Page 22

Gas tank for garage rejected

PA Auckland The installation of a li.u e fi e d-petroleum gas tank, which anxious neighbours described as a 12tonne bomb, has been refused by the town-plan-ning committees of the Mount Eden and Mount Roskill borough councils. Coster Motors, Ltd, wanted the installation to refuel a fleet of taxis at the comer of Dominion Road and Landscape Road but more than 700 residents saw danger of the risk of leakage, fire, and explosion. The tank is said to have been the first proposed for any residential neighbourhood in New Zealand. Officials of BP and Coster Motors had assured committees that there was no risk and that L.P.G. safety standards in New Zealand would ensure that disasters similar to those ;;t Spain and Mexico could rot be repeated. But two safety specialists said that national standards were no more than adequate and the company’s standards, although higher, still fell

short for such a densely settled area. Residents said that nearly 12,000 persons, many of them elderly, would have to be moved from the area within minutes, if the tank leaked or was threatened by fire.

They also said that heavy L.P.G. fumes would flow quickly into the storwater drains and travel long distances underg.ound, spreading the risk of explosion into volcanic caves common in Mount Eden