TWO TAKEN TO HOSPITAL

Chronicle (Levin), 1 April 1946, Page 8

TWO TAKEN TO HOSPITAL

-Press Association

big wellington fire apartment house blaze

By Telegraph—

WEL1 INGTON, March 31. Two people were taken to hospitai t'ollowing a fire shortly after noon today in a nine-roomed apartment house at 06 Ellice Strcet, Wellington. They were Mrs. C. McMillan, suli'ering from severe burns to ber left liand and ann, shock and bruises, and John Bowden, a radio servicenian, burns to the head, face and arrns and slight shock. Mrs. AtcMillan sustained lier in,]uries while eseaping from a rooni at the uack of the house, which is of two storeys at the front. and rather more at the back, the section sloping away from the road frontage. Neigtibours had placed a ladder beneath the window, but v. failed to reach the ledge by iive or six feet. Mrs. McMillan iowered lier son, I Jackie, to the ladder and then tried to I lower herself. As she did so, the fire 1 began to svveep out of the window and her hands were bumed. She tried to j drop to the ladder, but was not eutirely i successful, her legs becoming entangied : with it as she feil. Bowden 's injuries were sustained in j eh'orts to save some elfects in the buni- j ing( l'ooms. miss Cox, who oecupied a room on the first fioor at the back-of the house, aiso | had difliculty in eseaping. With the j wai ls of her room blazing and the cur- j tains of the window alight, she had to j drop from the window h eight of one | storey to the roof of an outliou.se, v/here j .fireman helped to break her f'all. The fire is believed to have started-l in a front room on the first fioor oecu- ! pied by a taxi-driver, Douglas Lynn aml j his wife. Lynn was at the iirm 's I garage. Mrs. Jjynn had gone to the | bathroom shortly before the fire was discovered. She heard someone inside the house shout "Fire!" and hurried out of the bath into her dressing gow\n. Going to her room and opening the1 door, she was met by a burst of fiame. } "I rushed to rouse Mrs. ^IcMiilan ; and hammered on her door, but could j not get, a .eply, " she said. "When Ii turned to niake for the staircase, 1 \ found it on fire. 1 ran back into the I bathroom, got out of the window and j climbed down the waste pipes to the I roof of . Le oa'ck porch and jumped from j there to the ground. " iTrs. Lynn has abrasions to her arins and bruises 011 her lips and cheek. She and he husband lost practically everything. Everyone on the ground fioor — nine lived upstairs and 11 dovvnstaiiys — had little difficulty in getting out, but two girls who oecupied the first fioor rooms opposite the Lynns escaped down the stairs clad only in their night attire. Their room was burned out. The only fire escape from the upper storey, an iron one, runs down a wall outside the windows on a silnporch fronting the rooln' . oecupied by the Lynns, It was . ixnpossible, tlierefore, f 0 r any one to' "get 1 0 i t .