TRAPPED BY FLAMES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 357, 18 May 1928, Page 1

TRAPPED BY FLAMES

Boarder’s Narrow Escape BLAZE IN WELLESLEY STREET SIX boarders at 106 A Wellesley Street West, had a narrow escape early this morning when fire gutted their boarding-house, a large two-storeyed wooden building. Practically nothing was saved.

The alarm was given at 4 40 by the, policeman on night duty at tlie corner of Hobson and Wellesley Streets. When he reacched the blazing building the occupants had just awakened and were rushing out to escape the flames which were then bursting through the roof and windows. Within eight minutes the City Brigade arrived. A smell of burning clothes and the sound of bottles and pans falling in the kitchen below her bedroom awakened Mrs. Collins. Her room is on the top floor at the front of the house. When she opened her door the flames were shooting up the stairway at the back of the building. Stopping only to put on a coat that was hanging ; at the foot of her bed, she rushed along the passage and awakened Mr. i H. T. Simons, whose room was at the i head of the stairs. Mr. Simons was sleeping with his 1 window wide open. When he was i awakened by the shouting outside he | found the room full of smoke and , pitch dark. For some time he could not find the door and when at last ' he opened it, the flames, roaring up the stairway, fanned by the draught ; from the open window, drove him ! back. He wrapped a blanket around | his head and dashed through the flames to the passage and an open . doorway at the front of the house. He !

, was clad only in his night shirt. : Everything in the room wan lost. Meanwhile, Mrs. Collins had seized her small son. Lloyd, and had awakened the landlady Mrs. L. William-, who, with her three children, was ' sleeping in a room across tlie passage. , Together they carried the children to safety. Mrs. Williams was able t«* | save a few of her clothes, but Mrs. | Collins lost everything, including a gramophone, sewing machine and a I camera. The constable rushed <nto the building to try to save some of the boarders' effects, but he was driven back by the smoke . and heat. Within half an hour of their arrival I the firemen had the outbreak under control. Two of the rooms on the ground floor had escaped damage, the fire having apparently begun in the kitchen and spread upward to the bedrooms of the second storey. The building was owned by Messrs. Good and Earl and was insured for £525 with the Commercial Union. The contents were covered by a policy for £320 in the Insurance Dffioe ot Australia. Mr. Simons is the heaviest loser. None of his effects was insured and a sum of money was destroyed, llis loss amounts to about £5C*.