DANGEROUS GAS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 300, 28 May 1915, Page 5

DANGEROUS GAS.

THE RECENT WELLINGTON FATALITIES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) By Telegraph. , Wellington, Last Night. Wellington has at last learned the truth about the extraordinary accident that resulted ill tlij deaths of five persons in the city from gas poisoning at the end of last month. The Gas Company, through its legal representative and its engineering experts, explained at the adjourned inquest to-day that a mechanical fault in one of the governors on a high pressure main allowed the pressure- to he increased beyond the safety point in the service mains. The water was bjiiwn out of the meters in very many houses, and in some instances the gas was able to escape into living rooms, with the results already known to the public. The startling feature of this remarkable affair is the revelation of the dependence the public is expected _ to place upon a few pieces of mechanism working underground for the most part. Then it is fed into the service mains through governors, which are supposed to reduce the pressure tp the required point. Thfre are eleven of theso governors in Wellington, and the fault of any one of them may cause the pressure to rise in all the service mains. The pressure is described by the experts as li inches, and a pressure of 0 inches will blow the water out of the meters. The pressure in the big mains may rise as high as 40 inches. If the meter is working efficiently it will close a valve automatically when the water escapes and - expose the consumer to nothing worse than the temporary loss of light. But there are more than 14,000 meters in Wellington, and the authorities admit that they arc not all in perfect order. It was stated in evidence to-day that there is no system of inspection in connection with tho meters. So when the pressure went up suddenly on April many meters (nobody appears to know quite how many) began to givo out largo quantities of gas, with disastrous results in some cases. The extent of the trouble is indicated by the fact that the company received some 700 complaints regarding faulty meters on the day following the accident. It was stated, by the way, that the governor which proved faulty, and on which lives depended every night, had never been tested in any way since it was received from tho makers at the beginning of the year, Wellington householders will begin to bo grateful that they have a municipal supply of electricity.