FIRE ALARM

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 104, 1 April 1926, Page 2

FIRE ALARM

COWSHED DESTROYED. At G. 17 o’clock last evening the Fire Brigade received a call to Seddon street where a fire had broken- out in a cowshed on the property of Mr B. J. Waller. The brigade, in order to reach the seat of the outbreak, was compelled to take a circuitous route owing to the unfavourable road surface in Seddon street, and on arrival found that there was no supply of water either from the Seddon street or Boundary road frontage to the property and nothing could be done to save the structure. It is not known how the fire originated for milking operations had been completed an hour before the fire was discovered. Mr Waller held the property on lease, but had an insurance policy of £IOO over the plant and contents. A device which, it is claimed, saves a great deal of time in the turningout of fire brigades ha? proved its worth in one of tho Dunedin stations. The device is of great value to sub-stations in country and small " towns, where it is necessary for every man to attend a fire. The apparatus, called a “circuit breaker,” is a simple, but ingenious arrangement of switches controlled by the fire engine itself. Immediately a call to a fire is received, all the firemen can take their places on tho machine which, as it leaves the station doors, actuates the circuit breaker, stopping all alarm bells in the firemen’s residences, telephone call bells and traffic gong. The closing of electrically operated doors and the extinguishing of the station limits can also be worked from the circuit breaker.