One long forgotten corner (thank God!) is 'Air Raid Precautions'. To many this automatically conjures up the image of the Air Raid Wardens, volunteers who's main job was to make sure that black out regulations were strictly enforced ("Put That Light Out" became a national joke) but were also a key part of response to bomb damage and working with Civil Defence to care for survivors. They performed a valuable role in reporting bomb damage and acting as coordinators of rescue efforts.
Signs like this appeared on walls.They directed anyone needed to fight a fire to a source of water. These were often circular metal tanks built up from mass produced sections and were easy to erect and fill. However, other water sources could be accessible river banks, mill lodges or ornamental lakes. Any body of water where a fire engine could get close enough to drop its suction hose in.
The object of interest in this image isn't the engineer but the dark object to the left of his chair. This is one of the heavy galvanised square buckets that were issued to be half filled with sand and used with a scoop on one end of a long stail, there was a hoe-like blade on the other that could be used for dragging the burning incendiary out of a corner to where it could be scooped up by the shovel on the other end and dropped into the sand in the bucket.
This was the other item of fire fighting equipment issued to households. The Stirrup pump and bucket. The pump was double acting and produced a narrow but quite powerful jet of water to fight a fire.
We also had the full time Fire Watchers who kept watch at night from high vantage points and reported any fires.
All long gone thank God but worth remembering.
