A Wellington Fire.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 192, 21 August 1901, Page 1

A Wellington Fire.

DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS,

By Telegraph—Press Association,

A\ T ellington, last night. A fire broke out at four o'clock this morning on the top floor of Jacob Joseph’s five-storey warehouse in Lambton Quay, of which the ground floor is occupied by the AVairarapa Farmers’ Co - operative Association, the two next floors by the Government (Labor Department, tion and Census Offices, the Official Assignee, and Conciliation Board’s rooms), and the top floors by tho AVairarapa Farmers’ Co-operative Association for the storage of merchandise, chiefly chaff and the like.

The two top flats were gutted, and the damage in the lower portions of the building is confined to that done by water. ” The building was insured in the Commercial Union for £BOOO, and the fittings and fixtures in the same office for £IOOO. Five thousand pounds of the total amount was reinsured as follows :—New Zealand £ISOO, Royal £IOOO, Liverpool, London and Globe £IOOO, Standard, Royal and Victoria £SOO each. The AA’airarapa Farmers’ Association’s stock was insured in the Pkcenix for £5300, which amount has been reduced by reinsurance to £2300. The fire entails serious loss to two public departments. The Census Depart-. rnent had clerks employed on the details of its work, and all the information used by them that would be of value to the Old Age Pensions Office and Insurance Department, besides other data, are irreplaceably destroyed.The Valuation Department had from

twenty to forty men engaged on work connected with the valuation of Nos. 2 and 3 districts, extending from New Plymouth on the one side, and the East Cape on the other, right down to Marlborough and the West Coast goldfields. A large part of these papers, which were set out in the offices, are reduced to pulp, and other parts will have to be rewritten, at great expense. There is considerable loss also in the Official Assignee’s office.

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