The Suffolk Fire Investigation Team

✍ Scribed by B.A. Leech

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 277 KB
• Volume: 22
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0015-7368
• DOI: 10.1016/s0015-7368(82)71521-x

✦ Synopsis

to pull burning straw from it. In so doing, he caught a brick pillar, which collapsed on to his head, and occasioned him grave injuries. The action in negligence which he later brought against the Fire Authority met with success. Sachs L. .J. in the Court of Appeal observed that it was " . . . . . a surprising thing to have put forward as a serious proposition that a member of a fire fighting team should have been allowed by the officer in charge of operations to dart in and out of the barn in such conditions without a helmet." I t should be added that this decision tended to create very real concern in some brigades. The problem to which it relates is perhaps intractable. On the one hand, assistance from a person with particular knowledge of premises can be most valuable, but there is sometimes, on the other hand, the difficulty of unwelcome "assistance", from fraught occupiers whose eagerness it is none too easy to restrain.

As is the case with many areas of law, the tort of negligence is a field which grows swiftly. In particular, recent years have witnessed considerable advance in an aspect which must interest those involved in fire prevention, namely liability for harm arising from the giving of careless advice. This, however, is an aspect which must await treatment as part of a subject to which a later paper is to be devoted, namely the law relating to Professional Liability.

All in all, Fire and the Law is a multi-facetted topic. As with Food and Drugs Law, it goes to the heart of our existence. From the current series on BBC 2 on "The Ascent of Man" comes vivid testimony of this truth-namely Dr. Bronowski's simple assertion that: "Man survived because of the master invention of them all-fire".