HOW FIRES SPREAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14806, 9 October 1911, Page 8

HOW FIRES SPREAD.

WOODEN HOUSES CONDEMNED

BRICK AREAS A FARCE.

MORE FIRE-BREAKS WANTED.

Tire waste of properly in New Zealand through fires has been brought before the public eye frequently of late. The cause of fires in many cases is ascribed by the inspector of fire brigades to the use of wax matches, but the true reason seems to lie in another factor.

" Wax matches do cause a great many fires," said Superintendent Woolley, of the Auckland Brigade, to a reporter, " but the root of the evil is the wooden house. New Zealand is wooden-built from end to end —the so-called brick areas hardly deserve the name. In the majority of the houses a spark in one room only needs three minutes' start, and the place is on a, fair way to total destruction. They are built like timber stacks. Brick buildings, as I have seen them in New Zealand, are far from being safeguards against firespreading. In few of them will you find a fire-break. From the outside they seem quite fireproof, but inside the ceilings, and often the floors, are wooden, while the walls are covered with scrim and paper. Then walls are varnished, just as if they were being prepared for a blaze. Wax matches can easily spread ruin there. .

" In New Zealand," continued the superintendent, "we have to watch both buildings and contents when fire breaks out. In most places the fireman has only to direct his hose on the contents. Adelaide, for instance, is a brick-built city. Brick houses there are brick houses— wooden, papered walls, no flimsy partitions, no inflammable ceilings. Each room is a firebreak. That is all seen to by stringent city by-laws and watchful inspectors. Should similar regulations be adopted in Auckland ? ' I certainly think they should. The other evening we had the remarkable spectacle of a blazing wooden factory, right in the middle of a residential area, and here near our station we have one side of Karangahape Road in the city's brick area, and the other side just outside."