Sydney Encircled

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 558, 10 January 1929, Page 7

Sydney Encircled

WIDESPREAD DAMAGE DONE Remarkable Escapes Made FRANTIC CALLS FROM A MENACED TOWN (Australian and N.Z. Press Association)\ Received 11 a.m. SYDNEY, To-day. SERIOUS fires are reported from all parts of the State. The city itself is encircled by a complete ring of fires, and the damage will amount to many thousands of pounds. Eight homes have been destroyed in the Lumeah and Min to districts.

The fire is sweeping toward Ingleburn. The flames crept to within yards of the children’s ward at the Coast Hospital, and the Lane Cove Hospital is also in danger. A vehicle bridge offer the Georges River was destroyed, and three houses were burned at Milperra, the occupants escaping' only with the clothes they were wearing. Fifteen square miles of country in the Bankstown district were completely burned out. A fireman collapsed in the flames, but was dragged to safety. REMARKABLE ESCAPE Two women and four children had a remarkable escape from being burned to death or suffocated by a fire which raged around the military area at Holdsworthy. Finding themselves encircled by the flames, they locked themselves in an old gaol, and were almost suffocated when they were released. The Are swept over an area of thousands of acres. FRANTIC CRIES FOR HELP Adelong is sending frantic appeals for men to help subdue a blaze which is sweeping toward the town, and graziers are frantically mustering their stock. Two stations have been destroyed. The excessive heat precludes work until night time. MILES OF SCRUB AFIRE The scrub around Katoomba is on lire for miles. The majority' of the inhabitants are doing their best to protect a petrol depot containing 40,000 gallons of spirit.

Many fences and week-end cottages along the coast have been burned. Reports from country districts state that Braidwood and Adelong are completely surrounded by flames. A sawmill was gutted at Tenterfield. The smoke pall over the State is intensifying the discomfiture of the inhabitants. The officials of the Weather Bureau see no sign of relief from the existing insufferable conditions. The beaches are naturally uncomfortably overcrowded with bathers. The competitors at the country tennis carnival to-day included many girls, who, owing to the heat, discarded .their stockings. SWELTERING HEAT High temperatures were registered throughout New South Wales last week and reached the peak yesterday. The thermometer in Sydney showed "a temperature of 86.79 degrees in the morning, 98.5 at 10 o'clock, 101 at 11 o’clock, 104 at noon, and 104.7 at 1 p.m. The maximum temperature, recorded at 2.30 p.m., was 106.2 degrees, which is the highest reading for the month of January since 1896, when the record then established was 108.5 degrees, on January 13. In the same period the humidity fell from 54 per cent, to 18. The Government meteorologist, Mr. D. J. Mares, blames the wind, which in the forenoon changed from east to north-west, bringing the heated air from the interior, which struck people in the city streets like a blast from a furnace. The sweltering heat and fierce hot wind to-day were responsible for more disastrous bush and scrub fires in the metropolitan areas, as well as in the country. Several suburban houses were destroyed at St. Ives, Auburn and Bankstown, in addition to outhouses and fowlsheds. Thousands of -fowls are dead, and suburban gardens are ruined, while vegetable and fruit crops have been spoiled.