FIRE SALVAGERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 667, 20 May 1929, Page 10

FIRE SALVAGERS

GREAT LONDON WORK MANY SAVES EFFECTED London has suffered from an epidemic of destructive fires during the last few months, and both the fire brigade and the salvage corps have been working overtime. While the splendid achievements of the London Fire Brigade, with its compelling speed arid its active methods, hold the public imagination, comparatively little is known of the less spectacular but useful work of the London Salvage Corps, which has its headquarters In Watling Street, E.C. The salvage corps, maintained by the insurance companies, consists of approximately 100 officers and men its object is to save from the ravages of fire and water anything worth saving. As Captain Miles, the dark, young, reserved, but very energetic commander, put it: “Our job is to save all we can when the saving is good—and often when it is not.” An impressive example of the valuable work of the salvage corps was seen in the great fire at the Hop Exchange just over eight years ago, when the Salvage Corps removed 3,000 pockets of hops from the upper floors and 9,500 cases of wine from the basement. The popular idea of salvage is that the corps went to a fire to clear up the rubbish after the firemen had done their worst, but during the last 30 years in which the Salvage Corps has been closely associated with the London Fire Brigade, millions of pounds have been snatched from flood and flame by tlie “black hats.” The Salvage Corps does not work so much with pumping engines and spouting hose, but by the less picturesque if more laborious method of spreading damp cloths over goods in burning buildings, the slinging of huge canvas bags to protect unroofed buildings from water, and an organised system of snatch-as-snatch can.