The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12, 1931 FIRE LOSSES.

Hokitika Guardian, 12 August 1931, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12, 1931 FIRE LOSSES.

The continued increase in the annual file losses in tile Dominion, which is indicated by statistics quoted' by the ' Minister of Internal Affairs, revives tlie question of the necessity for arrest, mg the constant waste of resources which is thus involved. During the past five years the annual payments to the insuring public by way of compensation for loss of property by fire have reached the huge total of £5,900,878, tin average of nearly a million and a-qunrter per year. A conservative estimate places the loss of uninsured property at 12\- per cent, of that recorded in respect of insured property, a,net, when this addition is made to the total insurance payments, the result is an aggregate loss exceeding six and a-half million pounds for the five years since 1926, or an average yearly destruction of property to the value of £1,850,000. Incidentally, it may be observed that the firo loss recorded in..the United States for the first four months of' the present year \yns 171,000,000 dollars and that the toll of £3,710,000 was taken by fire in the United Kingdom this year up to May 31. The loss, in the Dominion represents a; tenons destruction of assets which the. country can ill afford. As all fire loss i.s a total loss, it is desirable that the most careful examination should! be made of the causes of outbreak's with a view to determining in what measure they are due to carelessness or to intention.' The announcement, therefore, by the Minister of Internal Affairs that it is proposed to institute a “fire prevention drive,” in which the Government will co-operate with the insurance companies, is both timely and welcome. Since 1924, when the gross annual loss first exceeded one million pounds, the yearly figures have steadily increased, the only real check to their growth being in 1925 when a decrease in the insurance payments of nearly £150,000 reduced the aggregate expenditure to £861,977. Whatever the explanation of the increasingly heAvY toll which fire takes each year, there can be no doubt of the need for instituting, such steps as may be practicable to reduce the losses. It would..be idle to suggest that insurance companies are in a position to accomplish much by a more I effective pruning of risks carrying a 1 high degree of moral hazard. It may t be conjectured that the heavy ' demands made upon their resonreos have already compelled them to go ns far as they possibly can in that direction. We have, on former occasions, comments the Otago Times, expressed the view that a closer investigation should be made, than has been the practice of the past, of the cause not only of all fires that are regarded as suspicious but also of those that are described as mysterious, and it is satisfactory to learn that this is now actually contemplated. The Minister of Internal Affairs proposes to authorise an increased number of inquiries by coroners —wliat be himself calls “coronial inquiries’’—into the origin of fires, the cost of the inquiries being borne conjointly by the Government departments concerned and • the insurance companies. Evidence, of the need for the adoption of such a course is furnished by the statistics regarding the causes of fires which occurred during that period. In 14,786 cases the outbreak was ascertained, .but there were .no fewer than 8013 fires,’ or. nearly 38 per cent, of the total, to the origin of which there was no precise or definite clue.