FIRE AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1874, 7 September 1918, Page 4

FIRE AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

The great fire at Constantinople on May Hist was more terrible than any in human memory. One mast go buck over 80 years to find such a hre as raged for over 27 hours. The lire covered a distance of over 2A miles, right across old Stuiubul, from north-east to south-west, burning away a strip of from onethird to live-eights of a mile broad, Avhile half-way on its course it also branched out in a southerly direction. Ten districts of the city Avere seriously ravaged; over 8,000 houses, 20 baths, a dozen bazaars, and some 10 mosques were destroyed, and over 200,000 persons were left homeless. This part of Stambul is almost in the centre of the city; it is a congested quarter, inhabited by poor Maliommedans. who live crowded together. Desperate confusion .prevailed, until Enver Pasha, with a part of the garrison and the German and Austro-Hungarian troops in the capita), arrived on the spot, and the chief of the Turkish General Staff, the German General von Sc-hee. undertook with Enver

Pasha the direction of the operations and the rescue work. The fire had already reached the neighbourhood of Atik, whence it descended in two directions towards the southwest to. the suburb of Psamatia, inhabited by Greeks. No one could tell where the fire would go next with the changing wind. Home Government offices and several konaks of highly placed authorities, including those of the Grand Vizier, the Minister for Finance, and the Sultan’s Grand Master of Ceremonies, had to be evacuated in all haste, as well as the principal hospitals and schools situated close by. From the other side of the Golden Horn, from the heights of Peru, the lire was seen in the dark night. It blazed up now here, now there, and then, shot up, so that a whole street was driven forward by a violent wind, it in flames in a twinkling. The fire was finally extinguished in the morning of June lin'd.