SERIOUS COAL SHORTAGE

Evening Star, Issue 25419, 26 February 1945, Page 4

SERIOUS COAL SHORTAGE

NS SUPPLIES FROM KAITANGATA MERCHANTS RATIONING DELIVERIES No coal from Kaitangata has reached Dunedin since last Wednesday, the floods in the South Otago district having cut the Kaitangata Coal Company’s railway line between the mine and Stirling, from where supplies are railed to the Dunedin market. The extent of the damage rules out the possibility of the output being handled this week, though trucks are transporting some coal from Kaitangata to Stirling, and already the shortage is being felt by city industrial concerns. The bulk of the domestic supply of coal comes from Kaitangata, and the president of the Dunedin Coal Merchants’ Union (Mr D. R. Wilson) said to-day that only one or two bags of Kaitangata coal would be delivered by retailers until conditions returned to, normal. At present, he said 1 , merchants' were relying mainly on supplies of Southland coal, but, as most of it was being reserved for the railways, only a very small quantity was available for domestic use. Before the flood in South Otago the maximum amount of coal being delivered to householders was a quarter of a ton, but now that this crisis had arisen the only course to be adopted by merchants was to ration domestic coal severely. ' The position of the availability of small coal for industrial purposes in Dunedin was serious enough before supplies of coal from Kaitangata were cut, said Mr Wilson, and the longer the trouble there continued' the worse would the situation become, owing to the impossibility of the Southland mines being able to make up for the shortage.