Fire Brigade Administration

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22515, 24 September 1938, Page 16

Fire Brigade Administration

The disclosure of serious inadequacies in firefighting organisation in Christchurch after the fire in Macduff’s building and the State Theatre last May should make the proposals now under discussion for the • reform of- fire brigade administration in New Zealand of considerable local interest. The attention lately given to this question has been due partly to certain manifest defects in the provision for fire-fight-ing in certain areas, partly to the objections raised by some local authorities to the cost of the service, and partly to the Government’s scheme of local body reform and the consequent decision of the Minister for Internal Affairs hot to sanction the creation of new fire boards. There can be no doubt that the introduction of the fire board system in New Zealand, by which the insurance companies share in the administration and in ' the financing of fire brigades, has brought about a substantial improvement in standards of equipment and efficiency of personnel. But it has also been responsible for complicated and expensive administrative arrangements and for an undesirable lack of uniformity in methods and plant. Of the 55 fire boards in the Dominion. 35 have an annual expenditure of less than £ 1000; and, as the Inspector of Fire Brigades points out, “it is.very open to question whether the main- “ tenance of an independent local authority is “justified for the administration of an expendi- “ ture of this order if some satisfactory alterna- “ tive system of control can be devised.” . In the Australian states, fire ; brigades are controlled from the centre. with a considerable gain in efficiency, edjpiomy, and uniformity of standards; and it is fairly obvious from his annual reports that this is the solution regarded as most desirable by the Inspector-General. But local control is so firmly rooted in New Zealand that some less drastic scheme of reform must be contemplated, some scheme which, while leaving the system based on local control, will eliminate the worst evils of parochialism and introduce some element of centralisation. These are the two main objects of the proposals recently discussed by the Council of Fire Underwriters, the Municipal Association, and the United Fire Brigades’ As-

sociation and set out in revised form by the Inspector-General of Fire Brigades in his annual report, presented to Parliament just before the end of the session. The main features of this plan are that in all fire districts except the metropolitan areas the administration of fireprotection sei’vices shall be handed back to the municipal authorities, that municipal councils shall be required to set up fire brigade committees on which insurance interests are represented, and that a Central Fire Council shall be established in Wellington with powers to enforce co-ordination and standardisation. The point to be noticed about this scheme is that it contemplates no change in the metropolitan areas, although the official inquiry into the administration of the fire-protection service in the Christchurch area held after the big fire of May last showed that metropolitan administration is not without its faults. It was mentioned in the report, for instance, that the damage might have been less extensive had those in charge of the brigade known more about the construction and planning of the buildings in the area affected; and it is a reasonable inference that this weakness would not have existed had the authority controlling building construction in the area also controlled the fire brigade. The obstacle to vesting control of fire brigades in city councils in the metropolitan areas is. it appears,-that in these areas there are* normally several smaller municipalities. The creation of a fire board is thus the only means of maintaining undivided fire brigade administration over the whole area. Since local body consolidation is a remote possibility, it seems desirable that the scheme for improving fire brigade administration' should include some provision for closer co-operation between metropolitan fire boards arid the various municipal authorities in their areas.