Above The Law

Southland Times, Issue 23734, 4 February 1939, Page 4

Above The Law

Lives were endangered and damage estimated at £lOO,OOO was done by fire in Wellington on Thursday because the Government, in building as in other of its activities, has placed itself above the law. The building which was to house the Social Security Department was planned and erected in defiance of the Wellington City regulations. Two hundred feet long and 90 feet deep, partly three-storied and partly four-storied, it was built entirely in wood in an area where —to quote the Mayor of Wellington —“no permit would have been issued to any individual, company or organization for a building in other than brick, concrete, or other fire-resisting material.’ Not only was this structure swept away, but two dwellings were destroyed and two more gutted, four other buildings were extensively damaged and altogether 32 properties, covering a wide area, suffered in some degree. Feeding on the bitumensoaked sheathing which was extensively used in the Government building, the flames spread furiously; and had it not been for the concentrated efforts of every firefighting unit in the city the destruction would have been incalculably more severe than it was. In a statement printed this morning the Minister of Public Works makes an attempt to justify the Government’s criminal neglect of safety principles on the ground that the building was required urgently. Irresponsibility could hardly go further. Because accommodation was “desperately” needed, because steel was difficult to obtain and a tim-ber-frame building “could have been completed weH under the estimated cost” the Government sanctioned the erection of what would have been a death-trap for scores of State employees had it caught fire during office hours after occupation. The Opposition, of course, comes in for a share of the blame. “The previous Government,” Mr Semple declares, “shamefully neglected the building of Government offices.” Whether that is true or not, it is completely irrelevant. Nothing can excuse the erection of a building in inflammable materials in an area where experience had shown the fire risk to be serious and where special safeguards were demanded by the city authorities. The Government overrode the local by-laws; it ignored a warning given in Parliament; and now it has built a monument to its omniscience—in ashes.