WINDING UP E.P.S.

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 103, 29 October 1945, Page 5

WINDING UP E.P.S.

SALE OF SURPLUS STOCKS

RESCUE GEAR TO BE KEPT

. The sale of E.P.S. stock at the Corporation depot, Wilton Road, postponed from Tuesday to Wednesday next, is the beginning of the end of the wartime E.P.S., and from now that organisation will revert to its pre-war status of being as ready as may be possible for bad trouble which may descend upon the city—next month, next year, or, highly preferably, indefinitely deferred

The 2000 lots to be sold are of goods which it is inadvisable to hold longer, but rescue gear (blocks, tackles, ladders, jacks, etc.) is stored permanently at the corporation depots, and medical cabinets, overhauled and restocked, have been given permanent locations in city. and suburban keypoints. Besides such stores of peacetime E.P.S. equipment, there are kept readily at hand plans, records, forms, . and files which will enable the skeleton organisation to gather in more helpers and to get away, to a far quicker start than could be possible without the thought and work put into this paper organisation, for which the city would most of all thank the Town Clerk (Mr. E. P. Norman) should need arise. The E.P.S. was .everybody's business, and the council's officers have given instructions to the auctioneer that everybody is to have a fair go at the sale; the small buyer, who wants one jor six of this or that, is not to be crowded out by the bulk buyer. E.P.S. sales will be held- on later dates also. There is still in various of the suburban posts a fair quantity of gift or loaned materials and articles, and the continued storage and responsibility for looking after these goods have become rather a worry to wardens and to the council. Lack of response to invitations to owners to reclaim their goods suggests that they are content to forget them now, in full thankfulness that they were not required, but soon or later the stores must be cleared. What of helmets and gas masks? There is no clear answer to that. The stocks which were not distributed have been, or can be, disposed of at junk prices, but these are so low that it is unlikely that an effort will be made to gather up the thousands from home cupboards. By and by they will fade away. • What of the two-gallon petrol issue? That is a continuing mystery, but, the reporter gathered from inquiries in various places, the tins themselves are still on hand. Nobody really knows.