TOO MANY FIRES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 751, 26 August 1929, Page 16

TOO MANY FIRES

CARELESSNESS THE CAUSE COMMISSION MAY INQUIRE •‘WHE fire-bug is only a bogey advanced by people whose premises have been destroyed ae a reeult of their own carelessness.” This opinion was expressed by Mr. T. J. Watts, secretary of the New Zealand United Fire Brigades Association, when addressing the Onehunga Fire Brigade’s annual reunion on Saturday evening. Mr. Watts mentioned that steps were being taken by the association toward the setting up of a Royal Commission to inquire into the question of the abnormal lire losses in the Dominion. The Minister of Internal Affairs, he said, acting on the association's representations, had taken the question up definitely, and there was every probability of a commission being set up. Mr. Watts pointed out that two years ago the Dominion’s fire bill amounted to £1,000,000, and last year £1,500,000 went up in smoke. That meant an annual loss of 22s (id a head of the population, or, to bring it nearer home, three-quarters of the buildings in Onehunga, to say nothing of their contents being destroyed. “Do you think that these losses fall on business, men?” asked Mr. Watts. "Not a bit of it. He says ♦ hat he is going to get it all back from the public and the public will assuredly have to pay in the end.” The whole question, added the speaker, was one of prevention and the association had prepared ti series of lessons on the subject for the instruction of school children. The Director of Education had promised to have the question of fire prevention placed upon the schools’ syllabus, but all he had done was to publish the lessons in the Education Gazette, leaving it optional to teachers as to whether they instructed their ptipils. The association was now taking the further step of arranging for an annual competition by school children, for a cup presented by Mr. H. Massey, to be held by the school furnishing the best set of essays on fire prevention.