FIRE LOSSES

Hokitika Guardian, 29 August 1929, Page 3

FIRE LOSSES

COMMISSION tIKELY TO BE SET UP.

AUCKLAND, August 26. The matter of setting up a Royal Commission to inquire into the abnormal fire losses in New Zealand is under consideration.

Speaking at Onehunga, Mr ,T. J. Watts, secretary of the New Zealand United Fire Brigades’ Association, mentioned that the Minister for Internal Affairs (the Hon P. A. lie la Perrelle), acting on the association’s representations, had taken the question up definitely and there was ever.v probability of a being set up.

Mr Watts pointed out that two years ago the Dominion’s fire hill amounted to £1,000,000 and last year £1,500,000 went up in smoke. That meant an annual loss of 22s 6:1 a head of population, or' to bring it nearer home three-quarters of the buildings in Onehunga, to say nothing of their contents, were destroyed. “Do you think that these losses fall on the business man?” asked Mr Watts. “Not a hit of it. Ho says that - he is going to get it 'all 'hark from the public, and the public will assuredly have- to pay in the end.”

The whole question, ' added the speaker, was one of prevention, and the association had prepared a series of lessons on the subject for the instruction of school children. The Director of Education had promised to have, the question of fire prevention placed upon the schools’ syllabus, hut all he had done was to publish lessons in the Education “Gazette, leaving it optional to teachers as to whether they instructed their pupils. The association was mow taking the further step of arranging for an annual competition by school children for a cup to he held by the school furnishing the best set of essays on fire prevention.

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