DANGEROUS GRASS FIRES IN WELLINGTON SUBURB

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5326, 12 February 1947, Page 5

DANGEROUS GRASS FIRES IN WELLINGTON SUBURB

WELLINGTON, last night. Fire which started in dry grass at Hataitai, Wellington, swept through pine plantations on the slopes of Mt. Vietoria this morning, endangering" the Wellington Fever Hospital as well as houses on both sides of the Hataitai tunnel. Nurses from the hospital helped lo fight the flames for half an hour before fire brigadesmen could reach them. * ■ It was an hour and a-half before the thregt to the houses and the hospital was removed. Police were ealled out as an emergency. In the early afternoon ghis from the Wellington East Girls' College helped cxting'uish smouldering heaps of pine needles in a plantation near the school. Later the flames spread to grass, gorse and pine plantations in an area overlooking Oriental Bay, and an area nearing th'e city approaches to the Hataitai tunnel. The entire fire hrigade strength pf the city directed from the Central Fire Station by radio-telephone, "fought to subdue the oufbreak and by three o'clock this afternoon the main danger was passed.