FIRE TURN-OUT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 46, 24 February 1942, Page 6

FIRE TURN-OUT

E.F.S. AND E.P.S.

While other sections (other than, the wardens groups) sat through the blackout last, night and gained no benefit of an opportunity for experience of working under blacked-out conditions, the fire sections of the E.P.S. and., of course, the semi-permanent E.F.S., were called on by the Fire Controller, Superintendent C. A. Woolley, to use that opportunity. So also did the fire sections under the control of Superintendent H. G. Hume, of Lower Hutt.

The turn-out in Wellington was distinctly good. The E.F.S., being semipermanent, naturally should be good and on the spot. It was. The E.P.S. units, less tightly tied together, needed, full-scale exercise to tie the ends. There are 300 cars in this section; 252 turned out; and of 26 truck squads 18 turned out, fully manned. The reporting and telephonic communication system entails the work of just over 50 women and girls, members of the W.W.S.A. and attached to the lire service and E.P.S. They were on the job.

Every fire post from Khandallah to Seatoun was manned within 11 minutes of the sounding of the alarm and reported hi to the control room at the Central Station that that was so.

The extent of the exercises carried out varied from mere mobilisation to a full programme, with everything that gets over the ground and throws water. The Thorndon area had 20 fires, in theory, from Molesworth Street to Kaiwarra, and it turned out all the truck squads and trailers it had, and asked central control for more. And got them.

Other districts ran their own blackout fire fighting, not to Thoi-ndon's scale, but they all did something.

At the Hutt, too, the full fire services turned out as to serious work under the difficulties of darkness.