Fatal blaze at rest home

Press, 13 February 1986, Page 1

Fatal blaze at rest home

PA Auckland Two residents of the St Clair Rest Home in Parnell had to be forcibly removed from the blazing building, the manager, Mr, Tom O’Donnell, said yesterday.

As the fire, which claimed the lives of two women, raged in the St George’s Bay Road house, two other residents would not leave their beds in a nearby room. The dead women, both thought to be in their 80s, could not be identified by the police yesterday. Postmortem examinations could not be held because of hospital industrial action. Mr O’Donnell, who has managed the home for 16 months, was awakened at 3.45 a.m. yesterday by a buzzer in his downstairs room. He struggled upstairs through thick smoke to try to open the door of a

i burning front bedroom, t His way was blocked by - the body of one of the y elderly women, overcome g by the fire as she tried to r. escape. ;- “I saw that I had no show,” said Mr O’Donnell. i “If I left the door open o the whole building would t have gone up. By then I i, knew my business was to 1 get the other seven resia dents out.” With his wife and a daughter, Mr O’Donnell ;, awoke the others and y moved them out of the :- front door to where neighs bours and firemen were e battling the fire. “Some we had difficulty with and some just did not s want to go. They reck--6 oned they were all right t and safe,” he said. “I just a said, ‘Look, we have got to s move right away or we will all be gone’.” s One of the unwilling o pair was carried down a a steep rear stairway. The

other walked with the help of the O’Donnells. Ambulancemen were unable to save the two women, who were in the room in which the fire started. Although the police said that early investigations showed the fire could have been caused by an electrical fault, Mr O’Donnell said there were no appliances in the women’s room. The electric plug was not near the area where

the fire had started. The seven residents rescued from the house were taken to Auckland Hos-. pital where they spent last evening recovering from shock. They will be housed in rest homes until they can move back to St Clair. Mr O’Donnell hoped the rest of the building could be in use in a few days. Fire safety officers from Auckland and Wellington inspected the bedroom and debris.