FIRE LOSSES

Evening Star, Issue 21965, 27 February 1935, Page 13

FIRE LOSSES

MODERN EQUIPMENT HUGELY REDUCES TOTAL [Per United Press Association.] BLENHEIM, February 26. At the annual meeting of the Fire Brigades’ Officers and Members’ Institute to-day, Mr L. C. Gibbons, ot Wellington, general secretary the Underwriters’ Council, and Mr 11,I 1 , r. Gilmore, of Wellington, the council’s chief electrical inspector, were cordially welcomed and cheered by members. Addressing the meeting, Mr Gibbous remarked that it was a far cry from the days when the early insurance companies had fitted out their firemen in livery and equipped them with buckets, to the new London machine—a streamlined car which was a fire station on wheels. To illustrate the reduction in fire losses all over the world, he stated that in the United Kingdom fire losses had totalled £11,000,000 in 192? and £8,600,000 in 1934, a reduction of 26.22 per cent. In America the losses for eleven months of 1932 were 403.000,000 dollars, and for a -similar period of 1934 262.000.000 dollars, (n New Zealand in 1929 the fire losses and expenses incidental to them were £734,000. compared with £441,000 in 1933, a 39 per rent, decrease. Of course, tire losses, like everythin" else, went in cycles, hut when taken over a scries ot rears the losses were below the average.

Superintendent C. C. Warner, »f Christchurch, was re-elected president of the institute. ,