ALL LIT UP

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 135, 30 July 1941, Page 2

ALL LIT UP

SINGAPORE AT NIGHT BLACK-OUT' BY ORDER "Malaya and New Zealand have approached 'the problem of emergency lighting restriction from almost opposite directions. New Zealand is acting under regulations which impose a partial restriction —streets, traffic, businesses, and homes —night after night, presumably for the duration of 'the war. Singapore carries on night activities as before the war, with full street, business, home, and traffic lighting, but *with frequent exercises and rehearsals which have taught the people to plunge the ci'ty and environs into darkness at minutes' notice. "The basic difference in attitude to A.R.P. organisation between the two countries appears to be this : that while New Zealand has adopted continuous half measures which continuously affect the life of the people, Malaya has instituted by way of practice full measures at intervals, so that during the period between exercises the life of the community continues in a perfectly normal manner. Except, then, during the exercises. Singapore at night Is the Singapore of before the war." That was the summary given by Mr C. M. Col tart, for the past tfwo years president of the Automobile Association of Malaya, while discussing the civil and mo'toring slide of Singapore with a Post reporter. Mr Coltart, having been closely nssociated with the steps taken jn Malaya by virtue of his office with the Automobile Association, is naturally interested in the emergency steps in New Zealand. His stay in Australia was brief, and did not permit cf detailed enquiries there, but Sydney, he mentioned, seen from « T'asman flying-boat at four in the morning, sihone like a giant Christmas tree. Sydney, however, hart staged black-out exercises by districts, and these, according to reports, had been successful. T'o bring home to the 750,000 people of Singapore, of whom a very large proportion was coloured and illiterate, what was required was' a vastly more difficult matter than to reach the people of New Zealand, he said, but bjr publicity through the Press, the radio, handbills ill half a dozen languages, and bv direction of police, wardens!, and assistants the cosmopolitan population was reached and the way ready for the first exercise. Each succeeding exercise carried the plan on to the very full application which had been achieved when iie left for New Zealand. "The foundation of the system;* he emphasised, "is the effectiveness and completeness of the warning, patrol and enforcement systems. Singapore has a great many sirens and warning devices; the warnings ere also broadcast; police, wardens, first section and others in the emergency system spread the warning through areas and on roadways beyond range of sirens, and, with tSie military, see tha't the signals, are immediately: obeyed." The Singapore exercises were in two stages; the brown-out and the black-out. Brown-out —a term invented by a local l newspaper majn that hit the nail right on the heacl —meant no street lighting, all motor lighting (head and side lights) and traffic guidance lights masked, and (ill buildings to have their lights so damped or shielded that no direct rays could be visible from outside. The black-out meant that no light whatever should be visible from any building; all private vehicles) extinguished lights, pulled to the roadside, and waited for the all-cjear. O'nly vehicles on service, A.R.P. and emergency duties, carrying green lfights, were then permitted to move. Black-outs as a rule last about 30 minutes; brown-outs may extend over three successive nights.