BRITAIN'S FIRE PLAGUE

Waipa Post, Volume 38, Issue 2286, 28 March 1929, Page 6

BRITAIN'S FIRE PLAGUE

HEAVY ANNUAL LOSSES. Fires are costing Great Gritain two lives and in direct financial loss £lO,000 every twenty-four hours. During August there were 103 fires in which the direct loss exceded £1,000,000 and the total estimated fire bill for that month reached the fiigure 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 £lO,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 natural tendency to be careiless, and the failure, principally due to lack of understanding, of local authorities to equip their fire brigades with a sufficiency of apparatus to combat with modern risks. The facts that confront the business man, says a Lotndon writer,

are:— (1) The. annual fire loss is increasing, and it is at an irreplaceable loss. Fire insurance does not create 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 does 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 deficit 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 econo- | mic 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 be 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 wo;rk. Imagine what the saving of that one million a year would mean at the end of, say, twenty-five years. At compound interest it would be roughly £50,000,000." President Calvin Co,blidge has addresed a manifesto to his people calling on them to exercise greater care

and thus to reduce the national fire loses. The whole of the United States recently held a fire-prevention week. President Von Hindenburg sent for ; Chief Gempp, of the Berlin Fire Brigade, and confere with him on the subject of reducing Germany's fire losses, and especially in the rural areas. Mr Albert Sarraut, French Minister of the Interior, has met the fire chiefs of France for a similar purpose, and the French Government has recently earmarked a considerable sum for fire prevention. The 'Daily Express' says: "The majority of British fire brigades are undermanned and underequipped. 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 personnal of about 2,000 of all ranks. New

York City has 6,280 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 departments alone. The tottal annual cost' of Britain's established fire brigades is £2,000,000, or less than 50 per cent of that of New Yoi'k City. "By co-ordinating established fire brigades Whitehall can do much to reduce the fire losses. If a local authority neglects its sanitary or police services it quickly hears abc(ut from the Ministry of Health or the Home Office. But at the moment is is possible for any local authority to decline to maintain a fire brigade."