BLAZE AT OHAUPO

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 October 1931, Page 3

BLAZE AT OHAUPO

(Press Assn.-

early morning fire and explosion destroy hotel BOILER HURLED 300 FEET UP

-By Telegraph — Copyright;)

HAMILTON, Tuesday. A fire which broke out at 2.30 o'clock this morning completely destroyed the Ohaupo Hotel. The fite was blazing furiously before the inmates were aware of the outbreak, and a waitress, Miss Wood, had a narrow escape from death. The inmates escaped in their night attire." The conflagration was accompanied by an alarming explosion which hurled a hot water boiler 300 feet in the air. One of the volunteer hriga.desmen was injured by falling timber. But for the excellent work of a bucket brigade the adjacent shops would also have been razed to the ground. It is not known where the fire originated, but it is thought that it started from the kitchen fire. However, the- flames had such a good /grip of a large part of the building before anyone was aroused that it was impossible to say for certain. As soon as the alarm was given a bucket brigade of 40 men was organised, as there are no modern firefighting appliances in the township. Water was drawn from tanks at the Post Office, and the volunteers worked strenuously. -1 At the height of the outbreak a terrific explosion shook the doomed hotel, and the hot" water boiler was hurled 300 feet in the air, to land eventually at the back of the Post Office. Its involuntary journey was made clearly visible to the spellbound watchers by the intensity of the flames, which were seen for miles bround, as far, indeed, as Frankton Junction. When the explosion took place pieces of bufning timber were sent hurtling in every direction, to the great danger of the fire-fighters and onlookers. One of the volunteer brigade,- Mr J. Anderson, was knocked down by a falling brand and had his. hair and the back of his neck singed. The hotel, which was a two-storey wooden building of some 30 rooms, was built about 1880.