Great Fire in Sydney

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 46, 2 October 1890, Page 2

Great Fire in Sydney

BANKS AND WAREHOUSES DESTBOTED. MANY. MEN INJURED. (PBB PBES9 ASSOCIATION.) Sydney, This Day. The most destructive fire which has ever occurred in Sydney began at 2 o'clock, this morning in Gibbs, Saarland and Co's printing warehouse. The building is sit- | uated in a dense.block of premises bounded by Pitt and Caetlereagh, King and Hunter streets, containing some of the finest and most massively built warehouses and premises in the city. The buildings are all of stone and brick, and three to five Btoreys in height. The flames spread with alarming rapidity and the Southern Club and Feldheim, Golthef and Co.'s large warehouse were soon a seething mass of flames. When these buildings had fairly oaught the conflagration assumed such dimenaidns that for the time the Brigades were entirely overpowered, and there seemed little prospect of preventing the destruction of the whole block. One of the Club walls fell, injuring several firemen, and the wirid began to increase giving further play to the flames. Lark and Son's big dry goods establishment was next enveloped, and the fire quickly raged through it from top to bottom. At this time the wall of Gibbs Shallard's place fell, injuring another fireman. The wind then changed and drove the flames in the opposite direction upon the large edifices in Pitt street. Bull and Co.'s four-storey soft goods warehouse caught/ together with Richardson and Wrench's, auctioneers, next door. Bull and Co.'s was quickly ruined, and the City Bank was then enveloped in the general destruction. Another wall fell this time from Bull's warehouse, crashing through the roof of Richardson's and again injured three firemen very badly, who were only rescued with great difficulty from the avalanche of beams and stones. Park and Lacey's machinery store, in Clarence street, and Lawaon and Son's huge furniture warehouse, on the Pitt street frontage of the block, were the next to go. At the back of the latter is Athenaeum Club, a fine building only erected three years : ago; this also was burnt out. Twenty -five Brigades were engaged, and a large force of the Permanent Militia kept the streets clear. At the height of -the conflagration, when .the,, whole centre of the block was flaming, the sight was impressively grand. It is impossible at present to estimate the damage done, or give the number of buildings destroyed, but the loss will be, enormous in the value of buildings alone irrespective of the contents, probably amounting to several hundreds of thousands. The fire raged for four hour* before it was got under control.