THE MAKINO ACCIDENT.

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 59, 10 January 1883, Page 2

THE MAKINO ACCIDENT.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE FEILDING STABi Sic, — I have no doubt your reporter will give your readers a full description of the accident which happened at ■"Boundy's Corner" on Saturday last. Just allow me to add that everyone considers it purely a miracle that neither of the three poor fellows who fell into the creek with the truck, timber, horse, and bridge on the top of them had their limbi smashed, or were killed on the spot. To my knowledge the bridge has been unsafe for some time, and only a minute or so before the accident happened, a person living near warned the driver to beware the bridge did not collapse. Fancy a white pine sapling being used for the girder of a bridge over which heavy loads of timber are continually hauled, and this being allowed to remain for 4 or 5 years till it rots and becomes like a sponge! By the way, there wiR be another and far worse calamity happen before very long if the bridge over the gravel pit, on the same tramway, is not looked after, as iti timbers are getting very f raiL Now, sir* my object in writing is to point ont the . necessity of all bridges and other -constructions which span or cover any place of given width and depth being passed" before use by a duly qualified and authorised engineer, and should afterwards be subject to periodical inspection. This is the case with some other departments of the working of a saw mUI, and should extend to all others, where the possibility of danger to human life is involved. Surely the temporary bridges oyer rivers, gullies, and other places axe as important proportionately as those on the railway <or highway, yet here we knowtkey would not be allowed to remain or even to be used at all, without proper authority with, reference to their safety. Better thatlocal bodies or the Government should spend a few pounds a year in the due inspection of such structures as I hare named, than in perhaps supporting of a poor fellow in the hospital, or possibly paying the expenses of aa inquest. — I am, Ac, Pbotjencb.