Slumbering Peril

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 67, 10 June 1927, Page 8

Slumbering Peril

Explosives at Devonport POTENTIAL calamity broods over Devonport, which lives beside an arsenal. In the magazines of North Head and Mount Victoria hundreds of tons of explosives are a slumbering peril, but the Government has so far declined to be interested in the danger.

'ITAGAZINE explosions, involving disaster and loss of life, are readily recalled. Chances of accident are ordinarily remote, but that is cold comfort to those over whom the risk hangs. Freakish twists of circumstance have brought tragedy before. During the war, for instance, the city of Halifax was devastated because of a collision in which was involved a freighter laden with case-oil. Ignited by a chance spark, the oil set the freighter afire from end to end, but not until

she drifted across the harbour and fouled a munitions ship did the real catastrophe occur. Devonport’s destinies may not include an event of this character, but there is no telling, and the need for precautions is none the less apparent.

At present the one reservoir in the populous North# Shore suburbs is within a few feet of the big ammunition dump on Mount Victoria. At the foot of the hill is the Devonport Main School, so that the water-supply and the children would be first in the line of disaster if a fire got into the depot. Beside the jeopardy into which an explosion would thrust life and property, the present exclusion of the people from North Head, which has been termed the “grandstand of the Waitemata,” is a trifling issue. Nevertheless it warrants attention. Medieval posts, raising their turrets against the fretted sky, had a beauty of their own, but the red shacks and barbed wire of the modern fort give it few claims to aesthetic distinction, and in this instance deprive the people of a beautiful piece of parkland. To and fro between the depots and the naval wharves trundle motortrucks freighted with explosives. These, with their menace of a street explosion, are another danger to Devonport. CONCESSIONS TO OFFICIALDOM In justification of the official plea that the ammunition dumps are maintained for the benefit of the naval force this illustrates another privilege extended to officialdom. For the ordinary importer of explosives a depot is provided at Motuihi Island, but the Government escapes the regulations which prohibit the merchantman from bringing explosives into the port. From time to time all this has been a matter of concern to the Devonport Borough Council, which lias been agitating for the removal of the depots. It has been pointed out that ammunition dumps always attracted hostile fire, and that the North Shore suburbs would therefore be made unhappy targets if an enemy invaded these shores. Many dire possibilities have been pictured by the Devonport councillors, I discussing the situation in committee, but neither of their own nor through, the representations of Mr. A. Harris, member of Parliament for Waitemata, have they yet been able to convince the authorities that there is occasion for alarm.