NEWS OF THE DAY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20632, 13 August 1941, Page 4

NEWS OF THE DAY

Hospital Additions Three tenders were received at yesterday's meeting of the Wairoa Hospital Board for building additions to the maternity home. The tender oi D. Glengarry, Limited, at £1167 17s Gel was accepted.—Special. Boy Causes False Fire Alarm An 11-year-old boy, who was one of a number throwing stones at Devonport, Auckland, was responsible for a false alarm of fire when a stone broke an alarm box. All the machines from the Devonport station answered the call. The brigade superintendent said the alarm occurred when motor traffic was at its peak. Wairoa Hospital Figures According to a report by the medical superintendent, Dr. L. A. Riddell, to yesterday’s meeting of the Wairoa Hospital Board, the number of patients in hospital on June 30 was 48. The number admitted during July was 94, a total of 142 patients treated. The number discharged during July was 82, and there were five deaths. Fiftyfive patients remained on July 31. The X-ray examinations totalled 101, operations numbered 29, and there were eight patients in hospital for over eight weeks. The average number of occupied beds was 52.8. —Special. Jewels in the Ocean One often hears ol' the riches of the fathomless ocean. A case in point is brought to mind by the death of Mr. I. J. Rothschild, Wellington, which occurred this week. He was travelling with some parcels of valuable jewellery and watches in the Huddart, Parker steamer Tasmania when she was wrecked on Mahia Peninsula, with the loss of 10 lives. That occurred on July 29, 1897. Mr. Rothschild afterward made an attempt to recover his lost jewels, but without success. Diving operations were also conducted by a Gisborne syndicate with the same result. Mr. Rothschild was an expert judge of diamonds, and often travelled with thousands of pounds worth. Territorial Training Failure to attend scheduled parades of Territorial and reserve training units is to carry drastic penalties for the future, under regulations drafted to meet a difficult situation which arose through some men absenting themselves from parades week by week. Penalties of three months’ imprisonment and a £25 fine may be imposed by a magistrate upon persistent offenders, and while it is unlikely that these will be applied, the regulations allow little scope for slackness on the part of trainees, and penalties far short of those mentioned should be sufficient to improve the general attendance at parades. Since the institution of the ballot for Territorial service, hundreds of men have completed their three months’ intensive training in the camps, and then returned to their home districts and dropped their connection with their official units. The new regulations should help to revive their interest. Pipeline Corrosion “All punctures came from external causes, in my opinion from the corrosive action of the soil, exercised through weakness or holes in the protective bituminous covering,” stated Mr. F. W. Furkert in a supplementary water-report to the Gisborne Borough Council last night when referring to the condition of the pipeline. Many of the boles in the protective covering were due, no doubt, to the want of realisation by workers and others of the importance of safeguarding that covering when the pipes were first laid down. The protective coating was gradually breaking down throughout, and the inside coating also might be deteriorating, but so far there was little evidence of that. Pipes might be repaired and reconditioned, after lifting, and used to replace other bad lengths. The whole problem of the pipeline called for very careful judgment, not on the one hand to be stampeded into an expenditure of tens of thousands of pounds before it was called for and on the other hand not risking the catastrophe of failure of supply.