GAS WAR.

Waikato Times, Volume 120, Issue 19985, 8 September 1936, Page 10

GAS WAR.

•RITIBH PREPARATIONS. INSTRUCTORS TOUR COUNTRY. ORGANISATIONS OF HOSPITALS. (From a Correspondent.) LONDON, July 26. Hospitals throughout the country are being organised for gas defence, and in addition to medical and nursmy,' stalls 1 IVooO St. John Ambulance men have already been instructed m methods of treatment to counteract the effect of gas warfare, says lho Sunday Times. The figure is being increased weekly. Representatives of firemen are having gas instruction at a conference now in progress in Dorset, and the Civilian Anti-Gas School in Gloucestershire has Increased its accommodation for those who want to attend the ten-day course. There is a long waiting list. Tho Metropolitan and City Police and the London Fire Brigade have hud their instructors trained, and their programme envisages that 30,000 folice officers will be trained bv April, 937. Country’s Co-operation. At the Special Air Raids Precautions Department of the Home Offloe a Sunday Times representative was shown how the county boroughs ami rural areas are co-operating in their arrangements for the treatment of casualties, aud how the scheme for the more closely populated Metropolitan Police District is under the direct control or the Ministry of Health. Tile county boroughs are preparing their schemes based on that of the Ministry of Health. These include mobile first-aid parties, combined first-aid and decontamination units, casualty clearing hospitals to which serious cases can he taken by ambulance, and. if not lit for Immediate transfer to base hospitals, detained and treated, the base hospitals outside areas of special danger, laundries for the decontamination ol clothing, and a clerical staff for making records of casualties, their property and valuables, and home and treatment addresses. Instructors sent out by Hie Home Office are going to tour the country in 40 motor vans eq-uipped with gas chambers and gas masks, similar to those demonstrated at the Police College at Hendon. Schools and public warehouses are being scheduled as possible emergency first-aid and decontamination centres. Public washhouses and baths are particularly suitable for decontamination centres, as this work needs an adequate supply of lioi water and shower baths. Two Problems. The transport of gas casualties to hospitals. both central clearing stations and those in more removed areas, is one problem and the evacuating ordinary cases from hospitals to other places is another. Most hospitals are already overcrowded and much of the preliminary work of local authorities is with the provision of alternative accommodation for ordinary patients. Rural areas are being considered in a different light. In a part of th«> oountry consisting of villages and scattered bouses It is on!- rarelv that the district will contain targets on which hostile airmen will deliberated drop bombs, but there is a risk of bombs being dropped haphazard, either because Ihe airman does not know where be is or because he Reliance Is being placed on local doctors and nurses and the st. .Inlui and Red Gross Societies, and it is fell that if casualties occur and hospital •ervloe hi needed, ambulances should be Improvised for transport to the nearest hospital.