INSURANCE OFFICES AND FIRE BRIGADES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4308, 11 January 1875, Page 3

INSURANCE OFFICES AND FIRE BRIGADES.

(From the Melbourne Argus, Deo. 22.) In our issue of yesterday we announced the determination arrived at by the Insurance Companies’ Fire Brigade Committee to disband the corps of firemen they have kept on foot for the last twenty years, and to discontinue their subsidies to suburban fire companies. The public generally has also been informed that from and after the 31st instant, and pending the disbandment of the brigade, the United Companies will not undertake the protection of uninsured properties, so that we may shortly expect some pretty little conflagrations. No person can blame the committee for the decision it has arrived at. It has not acted in any hasty spirit. More than a year ago, if our memory serves us, the course it intended to pursue, in the event of its remonstrances remaining umioticed, was clearly intimated ; so neither the citizens, the Corporation, nor the Government can say they have been taken by surprise. During the twenty years alluded to, the Fire Insurance Companies have spent a sum of £60,000 on the brigade—partly, it is true, in protecting their own interests, but partly, also, in preserving property in which they had no interest whatever. As we said long ago, the meanness which could go on accepting a benefit like this, and withholding payment on the supposition that circumstances would always compel the companies, in self-defence, to do the work gratis, is simply contemptible. However, it appears now that the uninsured citizens have all along been reckoning without their host. It is merely a matter of calculation with the companies whether it is better for them to run the additional risk which the abolition of the brigade will entail, or pay for its maintenance. They have adopted the former alternative, and will not only get rid of the cost of the brigade, but will also, we presume, expect to be paid higher premiums in the absence of any machinery for extinguishing fires. It appears that “ the last feather that broke the camel’s back ” was the failure of the Government to deal with the subject on a satisfactory basis this year. How could the committee expect the Ministry to condescend so far as to attend to the practical business of the country when its whole time is taken up in deprecating and frustrating attempts to loosen its hold on the Treasury benches ? But something will have to be done, and that at once, either by the general or civic authorities, unless they are anxious to reproduce the Chicago catastrophe on a small scale in Melbourne. In the middle of an Australian summer we shall be left without any protection from fire, unless immediate steps are taken, and it is by no means pleasant to contemplate the possible consequences.