SYDNEY'S FIRE RISK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13722, 11 April 1908, Page 5

SYDNEY'S FIRE RISK.

If from what is published we are to infer the character of what is kept back, Superintendent Webb's evidence before the Parliamentary Committee relative to Sydney's fire risk must be of a very disquieting character (says the Sydney Morning Herald). The city's danger from fire is, of course, no new theme with Mr. Webb. Only in January last he made a statement on the subject which was little short of sensational. "There are parts of Sydney," he then said, " where, if a fire once got a hold, it would develop into a conflagration that would put into insignificance the most disastrous outbreaks that have occurred in the past history of the State." Of course, as a matter of practice, the risk may not be quite so great as Mr. Webb adjudges it to be in theory. As c professional fire-fighter, his trained perception of danger might lead him to emphasise the possible more than the probable. Nevertheless, if he errs on the side of over-apprehension he errs in good company. Not long back the president of the Institute of Architects directed attention to the danger to which large sections of the city are exposed even more strongly than has Mr. Webb, and only at the end of last year a leading London insurance journal devoted an article specially to the question oi Sydney's fire risk, which it considered to be greater than that of most cities outside North America, with the exception, perhaps, of some of the cities of New Zealand. While the probability of great sweeping fires happening, even in parts of a city which represent so much favourably-placed tinder, is fortunately proved by experience to be not great", it is nevertheless as well to remember that colossal conflagrations occasionally do happen. Within the past 30 years or so, within American and British countries alone, upwards of a. score of illplanned and structurally defective cities have been more or less laid waste through flame, the damage aggregating between eighty and one hundred million pounds sterling, exclusive of the Chicago fire, which alone represented a loss of some sixty millions sterling. All experts who have given the matter attention seem to agree that there are whole blocks in soma of the more closely-built parts _ of Sydney in which it would be humanly impossible to stay a, fire did it once get a good hold. Of" course these risks will be reduced automatically as modern buildings take the place of old and specially inflammable ones: but the process could be greatly expedited had the city the benefit of a Building Act conferring large powers of regulation. That, after so many years of talk, such an Act is still in fhe'mists of the future, is not highly creditable to the Parliaments and Governments of recent years. The indiscriminate stocking of volatile liquids and other inflammable and explosive substances, as indicated by Mr. Webb, is also a sufficiently real if minor danger, to suggest the need for a reasonable measure of regulation. As somewhat aggravating factors in the general risk, the fire brigade superintendent indicates the tiailing skirts of ladies' evening dresses.