"AIR RAID" AT NGAIO

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 111, 6 November 1941, Page 5

"AIR RAID" AT NGAIO

TEST FOR DISTRICT E.P.S.

A full-scale test "air-raid alert," in which the whole of the local Emergency Precautions organisation took part, was held in Ngaio last night in the presence of Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, head of the Wellington E.P.S., Mr. H. E. Combs. M.P. for the district, and a number of executive officers of the E.P.S. The alert was sounded at 7.30 p.m. from a siren installed on the main school roof. Shortly afterwards an aeroplane from Rongotai appeared and made a number of mock attacks on the district. Almost immediately "block wardens" each in charge of subsections of the area under test notified the main warden's post in the school, by telephone or runner, that their posts were functioning.

Theoretical incidents were set out in sealed orders, held by block wardens, and upon opening these they telephoned their requirements for fire cars or ambulances to the main warden's post, which was also the dispatch point for these vehicles. " The fire patrols were judged to have kept their side of the situation well under control, but first aid was slightly less efficient owing to a shortage of ambulances. The "all-clear" went at 8.30.

Subsequently Mr. Hislop expressed himself as being pleased with what he had seen. The night's experiences, he said, should show where some of the organisation's weaknesses lay. He. stated that a full-scale rehearsal for the whole city area, based on the assumption that the worst had happened to Wellington, would be held during the New Year, bringing into action the central as well as the district organisations.