FIRE INQUESTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20947, 10 August 1931, Page 8

FIRE INQUESTS.

There is great and urgent need to take steps to lessen the waste by fire that the Dominion is suffering. The Minister of Internal Affairs is fully justified in calling attention to the enormous loss sustained in this way —the average yearly total of £1,350,000 is appalling—and in proposing drastic measures to reduce it. Waste of this sort is a national loss. Even the considerable portion covered by insurance is a dead loss : insurance spreads the burden but does not remove it. To institute rigorous methods of coroners' inquests, applicable in all cases where there is the slightest suspicion of deliberate fire-raising, would provide a strong deterrent. It would probably serve also to reduce the number of fires arising from culpable carelessness. At present the police make inquiries into every fire, as itis their duty to do in connection with many untoward happenings, but this particular call for their vigilance is becoming so imperative that it should have special attention in a very detailed way. It is not enough to plead with the general public to take greater precautions against fire; the knowledge that searching investigation will be made in every instance should furnish with a useful "outside conscience" those whose sense of citizenship is deficient. If, added to this certainty of close inquiry by the police, there is provision for a public inquest as an ordinary sequel to a fire, a salutary effect should be achieved. In what the Minister proposes, however, there is an unnecessarily cuift. 1 - brous procedure. To have each police report considered jointly by tho Commissioner of Police, the inspector of fire brigades and the general manager of the State Fire Department, as a basis for application to the Justice Department for a coroner's inquiry, entails difficulty and delay. In this matter, easy and prompt action on the spot is desirable, the analogous holding of an iriquest on any death in connection with which no medical certificate is given. The procedure ought to be simplified, in order to bring about the maximum result contemplated in the Minister's proposal.