EMERGENCY PLANS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23830, 9 June 1939, Page 7

EMERGENCY PLANS

EARTHQUAKE POSSIBILITY AVIATION'S PART OVERLOOKED VALUABLE SERVICE POSSIBLE (Special to Daily Times? WELLINGTON, June 8. Comment was made to-day by Mr E. W. Annand, secretary of the Wellington Aero Club, expressing the view of the executive of the Wellington Aero Club and 1 , of aviation interests generally that by an oversight no mention whatever had been made in the scheme of organisation to meet any possible earthquake emergency of the part which aviation could take in communication, transport, and the maintenance of supplies in the event of serious disaster. “It is plain that this was an oversight,” Mr Annand said, “ but it was an extraordinary oversight in view of the assistance given by aircraft in the Hawke’s Bay disaster of 1931, and by club, commercial, and Air Force machines In the later flood disasters of Northern Hawke’s Bay.” The more serious the disaster the greater was the value of aircraft in emergency organisation, for should surface services be disrupted; aircraft alone could at once re-establish contact. The list of duties which they could most effectively undertake was long, but the main possibilities fell under such headings as communications; the rapid circulation of information and instructions, the survey of stricken areas: the supply of food and necessities to outlying areas; hospital services; the carriage of urgent cases, for which several of the clubs and the Air Force were already specially equipped: the transport of special personnel, doctors, nurses, health and engineering officials; the delivery of medical and nursing supplies; and the maintenance of intelligence pending the reestablishment of the usual services. "Within that outline there is room for detailed planning,” Mr Annand said, “lor although all the air services —Government, club,, and commercial — have their own standing organisations and discipline to enable them to jump right into any emergency duty, aviation will be used to its highest efficiency only if its part is planned in advance. The Wellington Aero Club is not competent, strictly speaking, to offer the most ready and fullest cooperation of every efub in New Zealand, but it takes that risk, knowing that every club will be with it, and everyone in the Air Force and commercial aviation also, but the job has to be planned in advance. It is probable that the plain* will not be required, but it is worth setting out in detail nevertheless.” j