FIRE LOSSES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 253, 20 September 1930, Page 6

FIRE LOSSES.

LAST YEAR’S FIGURES. TOTAL OVER A MILLION. WELLINGTON, : Sept. 17. Fire took a heavy toll of property in New Zealand during 1929, and the loss is conservatively estimated at £1,230,255. According to the annual report of the Inspector of Fire Brigades, Captain T. T. Hugo, which was presented to Parliament yesterday, this fire waste is equivalent to a loss of 16s id a head of the population. Inspector Hugo said the number of fire calls received throughout the fifty fire districts during the twelve months ended March 31, 1930, totalled 3164, an increase of 118 over the previous twelve months. Of the total number, 1351 were property fires, 435 chimney fires, 573 bush, grass and rubbish fires, 717 false alarms, and. 88 out-of-district fires. The fire loss throughout the five districts for tho twelve months (all losses quoted, unless otherwise stated, include loss sustained on both insured and non-insured property) amounted to £410,217. The four heaviest district losses occurred in Wellington (£102,803), Christchurch (£64,912), Auckland (£44,154) and Dunedin (£24,285). Incendiarism or suspected incendiarism is reported as the cause of 58 fires, involving a loss of £51.328; and 46 fires occurred in unoccupied buildings, with a loss of £24,084. Sparks from washing-coppers and open-grate fireplaces were responsible for 90 fires, causing a loss of £13,080; switches left on electric irons, kettles and heaters, 41 fires, loss £8809; gas left on, rings and stoves, 28 fires, loss £6OH); airing clothes, 16 fires, loss £5393; matches thrown down alight, 141 fires, loss £48,029; cigarette-butts and smoking 55 fires, loss £9081; lighted candles 12 fires, loss £1624; live ashes thrown out, 28 fires, loss £1388; benzine vapour in proximity to light, 4b fires, loss £2144. “In addition to the 457 fires m which the causes of the outbreaks were ascertained,” continues the report, “there is to be reckoned with, as largely in the same category in regard to carelessness, the 375 fires involving a loss of £195,000 reported as of unknown’ origin, and that are in most cases the ‘late call’ and more extensive fires in which all trace .of the cause had been destroyed. It is a safe assumption that at least <0 per cent, of the 375 fires in question had their genesis in carelessness. “The fire loss throughout)' New Zealand for the year ended December 31, 1929, is estimated at £1,230,255—-a conservative estimate —and it is a safe assumption that the actual loss was in excess of that amount, Inspector* Hugo states. “This, with an : estimated population in the Dominion of 1,450,594 gives an average loss of 16s 7d per capita. The loss in the fifty fire districts for the corresponding twelve months’ neriod amounted to £461,966; that,'with a population of 637,590 residing within the districts, gives a per capita loss of 14s 6d; while the loss for the 848,004 persons resident in other than the fire districts amounted to £768,289, working out at an average of 18s Id per head.