LOSS BY FIRE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9122, 23 June 1908, Page 4

LOSS BY FIRE.

The great fire near Boston recently, when over £t,000,000 worth of property was destroyed, hn lei the American Press to draw attention t<> the enormous annual loss from this cause. The "Wall Street Journal" states that in the past three years the losses by fire in the United States and Canada have aggregated £170,000,000, most of which was preventable. There are no such losses by. fire in Europe, and th; safeguards erected there against fire ought to be possible in the United States. According to European stan iard <, the fire loss in America should be £12,000,000 a yeir, so that by sheer neglect property in America to the value of £135,000,000 has been destroyed by fire, during the last three years. This journal estimates that at least 75 per cent, of losses are preventable. Official returns show that in the building operations of the forty-nine "principal cities" of the United States, last year, despite the great increase in the use of steel, brick, and stnne of recent years, 50 per cent, of the new construction was of wood. Excluding the United Kingdom,! the Unite:! Status, and Canada, the biggest fires of the last fifty years were at Constantinople in June, 1870. when the greater part of Pera was destroyed; at Irkutsk, in Siberia, in July, 1879, when the most important an 1 greater portion of the city was wiped out; and at Kingston, Jamaica, in December, 1884; these three conflagrations in each destroying property exceeding four millions sterling, much the greater portion uf which was uninsured. No other cantlagration during the -period within the limits (f location nanud se nn to have resulted in damajri of a greater amount than a million sterling. Canada has had a bad record; indeed, there seem to have been more great lire 3 there in proportion to population than in any other ountry.