REDUCED FIRE LOSSES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 64, 27 February 1935, Page 5

REDUCED FIRE LOSSES

Modern Appliances By Telegraph—Press Association BLENHEIM. Feb. 26 At the annual meeting of fire brigade officers and members of tho Institute to-day, Mr L. C. Gibbons, of Welling ton, general secretary of the Under writers Council, and Mr F. 1. Gilmore, of Wellington, the council’s chief elev trical inspector, wore cordially welcomed and cheered by members. Addressing the meeting, Mr Gibbons remarked that it was a far cry to the days when early insurance companies fitted out their firemen in livery and equipped them with buckets, to the new London machine, a streamlined car c lire station on wheels. To illustrate the reduction in fire losses all over the world, be stated that in the United Kingdom fire looses totalled £11,000,000 in 1929, ami £8,500,000 in 1934, a reduction of 26.22 per cent. In the U.S.A, the losses for 11 mouths of 1932 were 403.000,00" dollars, and for a similar period <>: 1931. 252,000,000 dollars. In New Zea land the 1929 losses and expenses inn dental thereto were £734,000 compare.' with £lll,OOO in 1933, a 39 per cent, de crease. Of course lire losses, like everytn’tig else, went in cycles, but when taken over a series of years the losses were below the average. Superintendent C. C. Warner, Christchurch, was re-elected president of the Institute.