A SEA OF FLAMES.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 November 1917, Page 7

A SEA OF FLAMES.

[ THE BURNING.. OF SALONIKA. ! GREAT DISASTER IN A BIBLICAL SETTING. '

The old city of Salonika has now added another moving chapter to its long tale of war and catastrophe in the shape Of a most destructive fire, which broke out on Saturday, and is still, here and there, continuing, although the worst is over (wrote H. Collinson Owen to the Daily News, London, from Salonika on August 21). One point should be made at once—namely, that the Military damage is nil, and there has been no loss of life among the. Allied armies.

Some 4200 houses and business premises, including all the hotels and practically every important commercial building, in the city, have been destroyed, and the number of homeless people is at present estimated at between 80,000 and 100,000. The portion of tho city destroyed consists largely of the Jewish quarter. The loss oi life is said to be small. My attention was first attracted to the fire shortly after £' p.m, on Saturday. From a flat roof about 200: yards from the sea one could then see that a serious fire was in progress in the north-western part of the city. At that time the city, except for the immediate neighborhood of the fire, was quite Undisturbed by the event.

Half an hour or so after I first saw the firo from the roof there came the first indication that Salonika was generally ■ aware that something was happening. From the cobbled streets below Came the distracting sound, so typical of Salonika, of scores of sprlnglm native carta tattling and bumfing along. The threatened citizens away up the hill were mobilising the local transport for the conveyance of their furniture from the danger zone. The hot Vardar wind, which for two whole days hud been Wowing without cessation, wti* pushing the fire along in a straight line from west to east. i DISTRACTED POPULATION. The houses in all this quarter of the city, which stretches away up the hill t&'the old ramparts, may he described as mere combustible material. They are old and full of wood, and the fire raged along them with incredible speed. But for the time being it was proceeding merely from west to east, and the general opinion then and later was thnt only that portion of the city north of the Ru« Egnatia was in danger -and that, even if the fire came as far south as the main street, this would prove something of a barrier and save the commercial section of-the city from thence to the sea. But when the time came the fire leaped across the Una Egnatia without a patnte. At about C o'clock I went up into the fire area beyond the Rue Egnatia. It was an extraordinary sight, a scene which but for tli£ sewing machines and smashed wardrobe mirrors which littered the narrow streets and'alleys might have been plucked from Biblical times.. Tn this part of the Jewish city all the .Tews preserve their ancient costumes and the streets were full of a many-colored crowd of men, women and children, sobbing, shouting and imploring.

Women were wringing their hands and crying lamentations such as no douht, people of their race cried thousands of >ears ago in many such a scene. From every door and hole and corner people staggered, bearing all sorts of useless household goods. ANCIENT FIRE ENGINES. It is impossible to paint a description of this frantic crowd trying to save its treasured rubbish, much of it German, the rush and uproar of the flumes and the crying of distracted and terrified people, the shouts of drivers who had dragged their carts across the narrow streets. And amid all this (staggered hundreds of native porters, who had also been mobilised and carried on their backs a most extraordinary variety of heavy and bulky loads. To combat the fire in* this quarter there were a few ancient boxes misnamed fire-engines worked by handles. One of them was marked "Sun Fire Office, 1710," and it must certainly have been the original model!' But even if the engines were any good, water was scarce or non-existent.

From time to time fresh patrols of troops of the various Allies came up, and here and there officers were attempting to organise and.direct, There were many pitiable scenes, but. there was no time to think about them. And it is'only fair to the people to say that they behaved very well. There was never any real frantic panic, only grief and wailing, and later on in the night, when it scemod that all Salonika was gone, this was succeeded by a general apathy in which nobody seemed to cave about anything. By then it was the normal sight to see a new street afire, and the refugees, who were lying everywhere on their goods and chattels near the port, looked on with apparently unseeing eyes.

By !1 o'clock the fire, after running in a long, straight line east, turned south in obedience to the wind and leaped the Rue Egnatia in its stride. By ten I had decided to become a refugee myself, A little while after the flat roof was ablaze, and by eleven all the streets running near and parallel to the water's edge were repeating the same scenes, but on a larger scale, as had been witnessed a few hours before away up ;the hill. By midnight everybody had realised that the whole sea front was doomed, and then the flames executed a quick ihnk movement just short of the. White Tower, so that the only exit from the town was towards the Monastir road. BRITISH HELP. Long before this time better methods had got to work; hoses were run out from Xavv lighters near the quay wall, and the British Army did good work with two modern fire engines; but It was all merely like shaking one's fist at the fire. From now onwards every effort was directed to helping and saving the refugees, and the admirable transport services of the British Army and the Allied armies were nt work. Lorries and motor-cars were brought in in apparently unlimited numbers.

I saw scores and scores of motor-lor-ries loaded up with men, women, children and babies, and their poor effects, and it was heartening to see the way in which the officers and men behaved to the multitude of distracted or numbed poople of whose language they understood not a word. "Come on, mother, we'll hand the kids up afterwards!" I remember one man saying to a wrinkled dame in a comic opera costume, and that sort of homely little touch was being repeated a, dozen time* a minute

. At this;- time it secmed.ttjiKth'ough the; only exit from the town would bo cut off and that the sea would be" the only escape for great numbers of tile multi-. tude. Cn the one crowded line of communication tli ere were scenes of great anxiety. Here again the Navy came .into service. All the lighters possible were run into the quay wall and crowds and baggage were conducted or carried on board. One cannot imagine greater solicitude than our men displayed, and everybody worked like niggers in evaluating the li'mieless crowds by road and sea. And witli the front now beginning to blaze and apparently the whole city one mass of flame, one cannot imagine a more grim arid fantastic sight than the escaping multitude, who awoke from their dumb inertia as they saw some chance of help, and climbed into the motor-lorries amid a babel of cries and counter-cries, with here and there a distracted mother raising her voice in a hoarse scream for a missing infant, AN ARCADE OF FLAME .By the time the front was blazing in one great cliff of orange and white light, practically all the people 'had been got out of lianns way. Then we stood here and watched the familiar buildings which, after a year or two years' residence, we knew as wo know home, disappear one by one. Venizelos street was an arcade of flame, with shops crashing down and clouds of fire shooting up. On the front the new Hotel Splendide was a. mclaneholy glory of flame and ruin, with its spacious new restaurant and tea rooms gone after a few months of life.

But the strangest sight of ail was the Place la Liberte, the centre of Salonika life, with its crowded cafe and terraces, where the Allied military bands played three days a week. At about 2.30 its destruction began. It was a sad sight to see tho beginning of the destruction of the Ccrele des Etrangores, the one real Club, and a good One, founded some forty years ago by a British Consul, and the scene of innumerable meetings and new friendships among British officers here down from the line for a few da vs.

And at something after' four, sated with seeing the raging destruction, I turned from the blazing front and began to think of seeking a lodging somewhere in the countryside up on the Monastir road, along which the refugee. con> voys were still rumbling. The fire ha? now practically exhausted itself. Everything possible is being done by the Allied armies for the thousands of refugees who are camped in the countryside round Salonika.