FIRE HAZARD SIR,—Scares about minor dangers, lethargy about big ones,
is a growing national disease, The latest is the panic about oil stoves.
Since man discovered fire and houses and brought one into the other some risk has been the price of comfort. Today, coal fires ignite chimneys and fling sparks; gas stoves have yards of doubly dan- gerous tubing; electric fires need wires that can short-circuit anywhere out of sight. With oil, there are the hazards of draught, leak and, as in all cases, kids. The background to all this is no general edu- cation whatever about fire precautions and no overall statistics about actual fire causes.
Two unadmitted reasons for the oil-stove scare are that gas and electric fires are 'controlled' (more or less) by huge corporations and oil fires are not. Oil is the poor man's fuel, and there's a strong lingering feeling that the poor should be uncomfortable. In Stepney, where I live, landlords won't allow single- room tenants to use electric fires, and fiddle prices on the gas slot-meters. So for most it's an oil stove or a long cold winter.
So oil fires are lethal and the others not. Preludin is frightful, liquor-boozing on a vast scale not ,a menace (and it's taxed!). Road accidents are dread- ful, no road policy exists and most drivers are quite untrained. Drinking-clubs are wicked, dreary pubs and fatuous licensing laws okay. Street-walkers are a disgrace, hundreds of thousands of clients spending millions on them not a problem. Birching cures criminals, derelict gaols don't matter. 'Juvenile delinquency' is a peril, youth services can lump it. Blantyre is a publicised horror, Notting Vale still a ghetto and there is still no immigration policy. Readers can complete this list of myopic national hypocrisies.
Five years ago, the house I was in caught fire. An electric stove fused and a spark from it met a leaky gas tube. When authority arrived to save us all, they eyed my innocent oil stove with intense disapproval. It blushed bland, warm rosy red at them, and still safely, cleanly, cheaply does so.— Yours faithfully, 34 Hanbury Street, El
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