BRITAIN'S FIRE PLAGUE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20114, 27 November 1928, Page 6

BRITAIN'S FIRE PLAGUE.

HEAVY ANNUAL LOSSES.

• SEVEN HUNDRED LIVES. TEN MILLION POUNDS .IN 1927. TEN THOUSAND EVERY DAY. Fires are costing Great Britain two lives and, in direct financial loss, £IO,OOO every 24 hours. During August there •were 103 fires ii> which the direct loss exceeded £IOOO, and the total estimated lire bill for that month reached the figure of £1,104,500. Up to September 15 the September fire bill was £542.500. Losses are yearly increasing. The toll for 1927 was approximately £10,000,000, | with 700 fatalities, to which must be added the crippled and maimed. The cost of the established fire brigades for the same period was about £2,000,000. The sharp rise in the number of serious fires is mainly the outcome of the increased commercial and domestic use of highly inflammable materials, a national tendency to bo careless, and the failure, principally due to lack of understanding, of local authorities to equip their fire brigades with a sufficiency of apparatus to combat modern risks. . An Irreplaceable Loss. The facts that confront the business man, says a London writer, are:--(1) The annual fire loss is increasing, and it is an irreplaceable Joss. Fire insurance does not recreate one single thing destroyed by fire. It merely serves to collect money from the nation as a whole, in the form of premiums to reimburse the owners of the fire-destroyed

property. (2) Fire insurance docs not cover the indirect loss, namely, the unfulfilled contract and the displacement of labour. The workers, bereft of employment, go on the dole and become a national charge; the local authority in whose area the destroyed works are situated loses its rates from those premises, and this de ficit must be met by the ratepayers as a whole.

(3) The loss of 700 men, women and children yearly by fire, with probably thrice as many crippled and maimed, represents a national economic loss running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Britain's inordinately heavy annual fire bill has not escaped the notice of the leaders of the insurance world. Mr. J. J. Atkinson, chairman of the Liverpool Salvage Association, has publicly stated: —

"If anything can bo done to reduce the fire waste in this country it will be an act of national benefit, and if the fire brigades can only reduce the loss in one year by £1,000,000 they will be doing good work. Imagine what the saving of that million a year would mean at the end of, say, 25 years. At compound interest it would be roughly £50,000,000." Appeal by American President. President Calvin Ooolidgo has ad dressed a manifesto to his people calling on them to exercise greater cam and tins to reduce the national fire losses. The whole of the United States recently held a fire prevention week. President ton Hindenburg sent for Chief Gompp, of the Berlin Fire Brigade, and conferred with him on the subject of reducing Germany's fire losses, and especially in the rural areas. M. Albert Sarraut, French Minister of the Interior, has met the fire chiefs of France for a similar purpose, and the French Government has recently ear-marked a considerable sum for fire prevention. The Daily Express says:— "The majority of British fire brigades are undermanned and under-equipped. Fire prevention and extinction in this country are not regarded by the Government as an essential service. They are in other lands.

"The largest brigade in the Empire is that of London, with a personnel of about 2000 of all ranks.. New York City has 6280 professional fire officers and firemen, located 'in 384 stations, and will this coming year spend £5.500,000, or more than the combined Budget of any two Balkan States, on the fire departmentalone. The total annual' cost of all Britain's established fire brigades is £2,000,000, or less than 50 per cent, of that of New York City. "By co-ordinating established fire brigades Whitehall can do much to reduce the fire losses. If a local authority neglects its sanitary or polico services it quickly hears about it from the Ministry of Health or the Home Office. But, at the moment, it is possible for any local authority to decline to maintain a fire brigade."