THE SYDNEY-STREET PARK

NZ Truth, Issue 105, 22 June 1907, Page 5

THE SYDNEY-STREET PARK

A BLAST ADOUT BLASTING,

Awful Ignorance and Incompetence.

A Long Series of Bangles.

Wellinigrbon City Council has done many things infinitely well, and.has done other things m so superlatively bad a fashion as to earn the biscuit for unsurpassable incompetence. For the purposes of this unbiased article the perfionmiances, good arid bad, of the local -body are roughly divided into two classes, initiatory and administrative, and it is with the shortcoming, of the staff m its administrative capacity that "Truth" proposes to deal. It is 'our painful and uncompromising duty to charge the engineer with grave culpability m connection with the Sydney-street Park operations, which are carried out m so incompetent a manner as to deserve the jeers of the casual passerby.

In a word, the men m charge of the blasting operations do not know their business, aiwl_ .some thirty • or forty men engagefl oh ' the job. ,iliia.ye Tip. suSer for their, ignorance. Oh i>ti©, Kel- , bur»ne Park work on© roan carried out the blastiiig, and usually b'rougfrt down enough spoil' to keep the gang going for three days. At Sydneystreet one pennamenti band, who draws £3 a wcc'.: , wet or dry, ' 'bulls' ' the hole, then puts on his coat and inspects the scenery ; another permanent hand charges the hole, then bocomes a tired spectator ; and a third permanent man fires the 'shot ami resumes Ms interrupted pipe. That is to say, throe men do the work that Mick . Enrigfot used to do on his lonesome at Keiburne, and two men are employed' on the '''jumper," holedrilling, when one man only manipulated the contrivance at Keiburne, this 'despite the fact that the Syd-ney-street formation is rotten rock and more easily worked than Keiburne Park. One. would imagine that with this elaborate and useless staff, the thing would at least be done properly, but the work of blasting for ttie past few weeks has been

ONE LONG- SERIES OF; BUNGLES and abortive' effort. Take. a typical day recently. It took five hours to '■'jumiper" four holes ; another quarter ! of an hour to charge them, then the gang stood off for .ten minutes, and 1 at..the end of that time the man -m j oharge did not know they had gorio off, altihougih they had done so, hut the: charge was so" weak that th© explosion was Tsot nearly so ..te.rri'M-o-as one of J; J. North's vilest epithets when he is referring to this long-suffering newspaper. The holes had to be reHdrilled, which took another couple of hours,, and re-charged, and another interminable .-. delay occurred through the ignorance of ■ the man m oharge m "bulling" the hole. The fuse is usually, ignited and dropped into the hole, hut the , ' incomprehensible person ■ mentioned rammed the primer down with the; tampen, rod, exploded the cap, *>a.ndtne charge blew out. It struck ths "jumper" man (name, C Johnson) on the hand, and irojurod it so badly that he had to be removed to the hospital. -H-ad-it iiot 4een i?h^t J v■t^:■ l^jpe-/.-<>f^ :^tij•e;'' explosion was broken 'by the iampe'ri rod, he would navegot the lot m the face and suffered (at least) permanent injury to his . sight. When at last a shot was fired ibhe charge was so weak that ii) merely blew the 1 top of the hole off; a/nd the gang had 1 to work' like slaves >to pick out the mullook that the shot should have blown to blazes. During the whole of the time outlined above, between thirty and forty men were idle waiting to shovel into the trucks, .and as they are compelled by the gangers to get out a certain amount of spoil m " the day they had

,TO GRAFT LIKE NIGGERS

on the itoaid formation to loosen the stuff that -should have been thrown down 'by the use of a little more dynamite. Tfhey had to do the work ttet should .'have been ". done 'by the explosive, and suffer for the ignorance, pr timidity, or worse, of the men who did not put m a .sufficient ohar@e, and who subsequently enjoyed the spectacle of the sweating slaves, safe in' 'the knowledge of their own three ;quid a week, wet or dry. ;

It would seem to be pure ignorance, com|b&ned' with the fear of explosives which ignorance brings.. In the fust place they do not use enoiiigih. dynamite 1 to ''"fauH" the holes, which are from 18ft. to 20ft. A half to a full plug of dynamite only is used, then the powder (about 81b) is pUt half-way up the hole, pr tQiree-parts,: when it should be a foot from the 'bottom, and through inadequate explosive and improper charging of the same, a man can sit over the charges and pick his teeth undisturbed by the explosion. This useless employment of incompetent men seems to* be a regrettable waste of ratepayers' money* besides delaying tfae work, and prejudicing tdie employment of a large number of men, whose knowledge- .of explosives informs them that even' when they do get a chance to work they have to bullock for -the errors of others, errors which the application of a.little common sense and t;xpo"ribri6e' •ferbult}' onitirely obviate. No doubt the men m charge of the blasting are good workmen m other departments. "Truth"' knows nothing ■■else"' against them; but they 'ought to be employed on work 'which they are able to do- The Council was fortunate m having the services of Mick En-right on the Kelburne job. He did the work now accomplished by three men, and got three days' spoil from a 40ft. face (or thereabouts), but Mick is comparatively affluent these times and does-nt rejqiuire to go blasting, though when he reads this he will probably

j BLAST THE IGNORANCE of has numerous- successors. It is not las though nobody else were procurable, as there are several men m the gang earning 9/ for Bi •'■hours, when the blastiferous blasters will give them a chance, who |'haye forgotten more about blasting .thap.; the present blasters -ever learnt. w .

Lastly, as "Triith's" sanctimonious friends remark m the pulpit, Engineer Patterson is reported to be, a fairly « good judge of 'men ■ and exerOises discrimination m making the best use of them, but this very fact mnkes the Sydney-street bungle stand out with the proinJn^riee of a drunken .chairman at a temperance lecture