MRS. O'LEARY'S COW

Taupo Times, Volume II, Issue 90, 9 October 1953, Page 7

MRS. O'LEARY'S COW

ANNIVERSARY TO REMEMBER It is eighty-two years ago today since Mrs O'Leary, on October 9, 1871, milked her cow by lantern light and ensured, by her subsequent action, that her hame would be handed down in fire-fighting history. Her cowshed was littered with straw ahd hay. The cow kicked the lantern over, setting fire to the litter. Mrs O'Leary could not waste her pail of milk, so she ran to get a bucket of water. In this way started the fire that destroyed the entire city of Chicago, with a loss oi two hundred lives. The leson to be learnt is the essential one of using the first available means to stop or check an outbreak at its inception. How urgent this is in the Taupo Country is known to those who had actual experience of the many outbreaks of fire in the dry summer of 1946. Visitors to the district rarely realise that scrub, fern and grass in the Taupo area is drier and more dangerous than is usual in areas where humidity is greater. Xmmediate action to beat out the smaliest spark of fire that may eatch is imperative anywhere in the Taupo district, even if it means, in the absence of anything else available for the purpose, the use of one's coat or shirt. Fires started west of Nukuhau in 1948 reached the exotic forest between Wairakei and the Waimahana Bridge a fortnight later and destroyed hundreds of acres of forest, The stopping or checking of the smaliest fire is a serious responsibility of anyone within reach of it.