SERIOUS BUSH FIRES.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 26 January 1901, Page 3

SERIOUS BUSH FIRES.

A Peculiar Sight Witnessed

[by electric telegraph—copyright]

(per press association.)

Beccived this day, at S 40 a.m. Lvi'xceston, This Day

Serious bush fires, the result of hot dry weather, are raging in the vicinity of Queenstown. When the fire was at its height, an extraordinary sight was witnessed. The fire was beating up a hill away from some houses when it encountered the force of a whirlwind, which caught the lire, and bent it a thin column of (lame, and whirled it down the hill towards the house. As it reached the first hut. the wind seemed to blow the fire right out; but the force of the gale was scarcely less disastrous. It unroofed the hut and hurled the building a distance of same yards against a house. A few minutes later the hut was on fire.and the house speedily demolished by the whirlwind which lasted three or four minutes and unroofed a number of other buildings in the neighborhood.

At. north Lyell the fire was most serious. Bows of boarding-houses and some thirty miners' dwellings being destroyed as well as the dwellings of two mine-managers. A certain) amount of damage was caused to the Mount Lyell Company's haulage line.

The South Tharsis concentrating mil was only saved with difficulty. The most serious damage done was to the New Queen River tram line, which was destroyed for a considerable distance, together with a number of bridges.