ENG-1964 — Page 184

LAW, ORDER AND RECORDS

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All people sent to prison, who are also drug addicts receive treat- ment. If they are first offenders sentenced to more than four months they go to the institution at Tai Lam in the New Territories. There, after withdrawal, they take part in a rehabilitation programme based on an open air life, good food and constructive work. The effect on the individual addict is dramatic and statistics on the programme are most encouraging. This rehabilitation is supple- mented by a research programme which is beginning to provide an insight into the background of convicted addicts and the im- pulses which lead to narcotics addiction.

FIRE SERVICES

All the features of Hong Kong's recent development—rapid industrialization, massive multi-storey building programmes, over- crowding in old buildings and wide-spread squatting in wooden shacks-combine to create intense fire hazards. The facts of geog- raphy do not make the matter easier. Hong Kong's fire defence must not only be self-reliant but it is also divided by the harbour into two largely self-dependent forces.

Overall co-ordination of fire defence is maintained by a fire service headquarters responsible for planning, research, training and equipment as well as the deployment of resources. The head- quarters also control the fire service engineering workshops, which not only provide maintenance and repair facilities for all equipment, but manufacture numerous items of equipment peculiar to the operational needs of the Colony.

The Hong Kong Island fire' district also covers the out-lying islands, and is responsible for fire fighting operations in the harbour. The mainland district stretches from Kowloon to the Chinese border. Districts are divided into operational divisions and each district also includes a search and rescue division. These are organized to meet the problems created by multi-storey development and the ever-increasing demands on fire appliances for rescue duties such as landslides, building collapses, major accidents and persons in peril on both land and water. An average of 600 persons annually are rescued by the Fire Service from such predicaments. The creation of these divisions greatly reduces the dissipation of fire fighting resources on incidents not involving fire, and facilitates the simulta- neous conduct of rescue and fire fighting operations at major fires.