ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: Chief Scout Talks

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 113, 9 April 1930, Page 4

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: Chief Scout Talks

For fellows who are Scouts there are always things for which they have to he prepared. At Christmas it is the "Good Turn” season; in summer it is the “Drowning”,, season. I don’t mean the season in which Scouts ought to be drowned; I mean the season in which other, asses get drowned and Scouts get the'opportunity of saving them —if they havo learned how. Then there is always the danger of fire, when houses and .people are apt to get burned unless Scouts are .about who know how to do the right thing for saving them. Chimney Fire. A chimney on fire is the commonest kind of fire. It is always happening and yet people often don’t know how to deal with it. You can tell when a chimney is on fire by the thick, whitish yellow smoke that comes out with a sour kind of smell of its own. It is caused by having a chimney dirty and full of soot. , One w.av to put it out is to throw a lot of salt on the-fire in the grate and hang a wet blanket or rug in front of it, so as to let the gas, which the burning salt makes, be drawn up the chimney. A better thing than salt is to put an imp into the fire. -By “imp” I don't mean your younger brother or a Wolf Cub, but a little thing called an imp which you can buy at a grocers for a few pence. • This makes a sort of explosive gas which puffs the burning soot out at the top of the chimney. If you haven’t got salt or an imp the best thing is to rake out the fire and choke the burning soot by stopping up the chimney at the top and bottom. Calling the Fire Brigade. If you are in a town, as a Scout you will know where the nearest fire alarm telephone is, and the nearest fire brigade station, and how to call it up. By the way do you know how to do this? Do you know how to use one of the street fire .alarms? If not, go and examine one and see if you understand I it, or get your Scoutmaster to explain | to vou how it works. i Of course you know how to use a

FIRE! FIRE!! FIRE!!! FIGHTING THE FLAMES.

(By Lord Robert Baden-Powell.)

telephone and you won’t go and do as a man did lately in case of fire. A notice in the telephone book case of -a fire ring up No. 5.” So he rang up the exchange and said: “No. 5 please.” He put back the receiver and wondered why no fire-engine ever came. He had never told them why he called nor where the fire waL. House on Fire. If you see a house on fire the first thing to do is to _give warning to the peojHe inside. fsiiut doors and windows to prevent draught from fanning the fire. Shut off gas at the meter and also electric light, and call up the fire brigade or police. Gas Escape. This, of course, you can sniff fast enough, but the difficulty is to find where the leak' is. It is generally in some dark out of the way corner, and the silly ass way of finding it is to look for it with a lighted candle; then

there is an explosion, a house bn fire, and generally one ’silly ass the less in the world. What is the right thing

to do ? Turn, off the gas supply at the meter, send for the plumber, and summon the fire-brigade with their gas masks, if it is a bad leak. ' Oil on Fire. If it is oil from an upset lamp or petrol and oil from a motor car ir aeroplane that is on fire, don’t pour water on it. • That will not put it out,- but will only help the fire to spread. The only thing is to choke it by covering it with'rugs and stamping it out, or by pouring sand and earth on it. Clothes on Fire, In the same way, if you find someone with his clothes on fire get him down on to the ground and roll your coat round him or a rug or blanket, and roll him. over in it so as to choke the fire. It won’t be pleasant for the person, but it will be better than being burnt alive. Of course, if there is water handy pour this over him too; but the rolling over business is generally the quickest and it only takes a very'few seconds for a person to get badly burnt. So it is the Scout’s business to keep his head, to know what to do, and to do it at once.