BRITAIN’S FIRE FUGUE

Evening Star, Issue 20054, 20 December 1928, Page 5

BRITAIN’S FIRE FUGUE

HEAVY ANNUAL LOSSES SEVEN HUNDRED LIVES 10,000 EVERY DAY. •

Fires arc costing Great Britain two lives and, in direct financial loss, £iU,l>l)U every twenty-four hours. During August there acre 103 tires in which the direct loss exceeded £I,OOO, and the total estimated lire bill for that month reached the figure of £l,l Ui,501), Up to September 15 the September lire bill was £512,500. Losses are yearly increasing. Tho toll for 1927 was approximately £lO,000,000, with 700 fatalities, to which must bo added the crippled and maimed. The cost of the established lire brigades for tho same period was about £2,000,000. The sharp rise in the number of serious ilrcs is mainly the outcome of tho increased commercial and domestic use of highly inflammable materials, a national tendency to bo careless, and the failure, principally clue to lack of understanding, of local authorities 'to equip their fire brigades with a sufficiency of apparatus to combat modern risks. The facts that confront tho business man, says a London writer, arc;—■ (1) The annual lire loss is increasing, and it is an irreplaceable loss. Fire insurance docs not create one single thing destroyed by lire, it merely serves to collect money from the nation as a whole, in the form of premiums to reimburse the owners of tho li re-destroyed property. (2) Fire insurance docs not cover tho indirect loss—namely, the unfulfilled contract and the displacement of labour. Tho workers, bereft of employment. go on the dole and become a national charge; the local authority iu whoso area tho destroyed works are situated loses its rates from those premises, and this deficit must be met by the ratepayers as a whole. (3) The loss of 700 men, women, and children yearly by lire, with probably thrice as many crippled and maimed, represents a national economic loss running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Britain’s inordinately heavy annual fire bill has not escaped the notice of the leaders of the insurance world._ Mr J. J. Atkinson, chairman of tho Liverpool Salvage Association, lias publicly slated:—

“If anything can bo done to reduce tho fire waste in this country it will be an act of national benefit, and if the fire brigades can only reduce the loss in one year by £1,000,000 they will be doing good work. Imagine what tho saving of that million a year would mean at the end of, say, twenty-five years. At compound interest it would he roughly £60,000,000.” President Calvin Coolidgo has addressed a manifesto to his people calling on them to exercise greater care and thus to reduce the national lire losses. The whole of the United States recently held a fire-preyontion week. President Von Hindenburg sent for Chief Ccnijip, of the Berlin Eire Brigade, and conferred with him on the subject of mincing Germany’s fire losses, and especially in the rural areas. M. Albert Sarraut, French Minister of the Interior, has met the fire duels o. Franco for a similar purpose, and the French Government has recently earmarked «i considerable sum loi luo prevention. The ‘Daily .Express says:— . “ Tho majority of British lire brigades arc undermanned and underequipped. Fire prevention and extinction in this country are not regarded by tho Government as an essential service. They arc in other lands. “The largest brigade in the Empire is that of London, with a personnel of about 2,000 of all ranks. Now York City has 6,280 professional fire officers and firemen, located in 384 stations, and will this coming year spend Co,500,000 or more than the combined Budget’ of any two Balkan States, on the fire department alone. Iho total annual cost of all Britain s established fire brigades is £2,000,000. or less than 50 per cent, of that of New York city. “By co-ordinating established lire brigades Whitehall can do much to reduce the fire losses. If a local author* itv neglects its sanitary or police services it quickly hears about it from the Ministry of 'Health or the Home Offine. But, at the moment, it is possible for any local authority .o decline to maintain a fire brigade.