World-Wide Fire News
“Off Limits,” Vancouver Refuses Fireboat Aid
The old question of just how far a municipal fire department should furnish fire protection cropped up May 2 in Vancouver, B. C. This time the controversy concerned protection at sea. The charge that “a Vancouver fireboat five miles away refused to give assistance when his ship was swept by an explosion and fire the night before, within sight of land” was made by the captain of the Norwegian freighter Ferngulf. Five crewmen were injured, two critically, as the fire, fed by 700 tons of fuel oil and lumber, raged aboard the 5,300-ton ship for nearly four hours.
Vancouver officials are quoted as saying that city fire equipment could not be used to aid the stricken freighter because it was outside the city limits. Vancouver Fire Chief Hugh Bird, who had no alternative but to abide by local regulations which forbid dispatching the city’s powerful fireboat to aid the freighter said “the responsibility of the fireboat is to protect the city’s harbor installations.”
The fire was finally brought under control with the help of volunteers from the Canadian destroyer escorts Saguenay and Assiniboine and the U. S. submarine Capitane docked at Vancouver. They hurried to the scene in small craft within minutes after the SOS was received from the freighter. The ship’s captain William Alcher, credited the volunteers in controlling the fire and keeping the ship from sinking. Local fishermen also helped in removing the injured.
Communications Fail in Mutual Aid
When fire struck the town of Lanark, Ont., June 15, the fast-spreading blaze destroyed the telephone building and appeals for help had to be sent through a phone several miles away. The fire, which destroyed almost half of the eastern Ontario town, left 150 persons homeless and caused property damage estimated at over $2 million.
High winds fanned the flames from the place of origin, a lumber yard, along both sides of the main street, burning more than 40 of the town’s 90 buildings including most of the business section. Only four houses were left standing. When calls for aid were finally put through (it is reported there is no radio network in the area for disaster operation), fire fighters from Smith’s Falls, Carleton Place, Perth, Almonte and Ottawa, 50 miles away, responded to help prevent complete destruction of the community.
Cable Ship Burns
When the 4,534-ton British cable-laying ship Ocean Layer burned 500 miles off Ireland on June 15, 98 men, 10 Americans among them, took to lifeboats. An hour later, the German freighter Flavia, 5,326 tons, picked up all 90 and placed some of its own crew aboard the abandoned cable ship. The blaze started in the Ocean Layer’s engine room and quickly spread throughout the vessel. An SOS was immediately sent out and 15 minutes later, the captain radioed he was abandoning ship.
From the World News Ticker
When fire swept three wards of a 1,500-bed mental hospital in Basingstoke, England, June 15, doctors and nurses shepherded 150 women patients to safety. Firemen controlled the blaze after a twohour struggle . . . Fire swept a crowded circus tent, June 14, at Sapporo, Japan, causing a panic in which 33 persons were injured. Seventeen animals were burned to death in their cages; the big tent and a theatre next door were destroyed . . . When a fireworks plant at Iida, Japan, blew up, seven persons were reported dead and 11 missing. More than 50, mostly school children, were injured . . . The main army barracks at Port au Prince, Haiti, the Caserne Dessaline, directly behind the National Palace, burned on June 21. Fire starting in a motion picture theatre in one wing spread rapidly throughout the barracks. Soldiers refused to allow anyone but firemen near the burning structure . . . Fire destroyed 40 homes in the new territories of Hong Kong Crown Colony bordering on Red China. A woman and a child were killed, seven injured . . . Three boys were found playing on a contaminated dump at a factory near Glasgow, Scotland, where radioactive materials were used for illuminating watch faces. They were hustled to a radiological protection center after tests proved their shoes and outer clothing showed some radioactivity . . . Flames shooting from a schoolhouse June 16 at Trivandrum, India, interrupted a “fiery” speech by Kerala state’s Communist premier only 200 yards away. While firemen put out the blaze in the thatched roof of the school, 20,000 persons watched . . . It is reported many of the 300 persons who required medical attention after breathing escaping chlorine gas at Monterrey, Mexico, late in April are still being treated. No deaths resulted, but 20 were seriously affected.
