Heat in Melbourne.

Manawatu Herald, 15 January 1898, Page 2

Heat in Melbourne.

FORTY DEATHS. Tile terrible heat of the Christmas and New Year week was responsible for from thirty to forty deaths of adults in the city and country. People dropped . down unconscious in the street and in dwellings in the city, and in harvest and threshing work in the country, On Boxing Day it- is calculated that 40.000 gallons of beer were Boldr in Melbourne. One hotel at Brighton beaoh alone got through eleven hogsheads. The drain on the Van Yean was forty-four million gallons • a day. Touring cyclists, who had set out before the heat commenced, had dreadful experience. One in the wilds of Gippsland was saved by a la3y who carried him several miles in front of her on horseback, otherwise he must have died of exhaustion and thirst. Another, who was in Messrs Beafch, ! Schies3 and Co.'s in the city, and who was going to see his father, a clergyman in the country, was found dead beside his machine on a lonely bush road. The heat wave reached Hobarfc, where bush fires have done much damage on the slopas of Monnt Wellington, and also caused the loss of several lives. Mrs, Jones, wife of a groom, near Longley Hotel, was burned to death while rushing through the bush towards her horn?; her boy also perished. Every person in the locality would have been burnt to death also had they not taken shelter under a bridge at Northwest Bay, where they huddled to gether, partly in the water, and remained for hours. At Carnarvon Mr Trenhara lost his life. When his house took fire the family escaped and took refuge on board the ketch Mary in port. Mr Trenhara returned to the burning

house, and there got surrounded by flamss, and, being seventy five years old, succumbed to suffocation. His remains, when found, were almost unrecognisable. Mis 3 Matthews had a sad fate at Longley. The father stated, at the inquest, that the doors of the house were burst open with the pressure of the wind and flames, and that the cattle rushed frantically in and knocked his wife down. The daughter, who was outside striving to save some articles, was caught in the swirl of the flames and terribly burnt. One { man, with his wife and seven child* ren, escaped by taking refuge in a hollow tree and keeping off the fire by means of wet blankets hung across the aperture. On Friday Madame Any Sherwin had a narrow escape. She left Fern Tree that morning for the Huon, and bad only just passed Longley when the terrible fire blast came roaring down the The driver managed to reach the Picnic Hotel in safety through blinding smoke and almost unbearable heat.