A GREAT FIRE.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 September 1922, Page 5

A GREAT FIRE.

SMYRNA IN FLAMES, '* GREAT DAMAGE DONE. THOUSANDS HOMELESS. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received Sept. 15, 8.30 p.m. Rome, September 14. Advices from Smyrna state that a terrible fire is raging in the city. The Greek and Armenian quarters have been destroyed, and the flames are spreading to other frees. The inhabitants are panicstricken. Italian ships in port are embarking the Italian colony, and the Government is despatching vessels with provisions and medical stores. It has also ordered a concentration of Italian warships at Smyrna. Received Sept. 15, 10.40 p.m. London, Sept. 15. The Daily Telegraph’s Smyrna correspondent states the fire started in the heart of the Armenian quarter, leaving sixty thousand homeless. It destroyed the Greek and Armenian districts and the beautiful foreign quarter in the western part of the city is in ruins, but the Turkish quarter is untouched.

The quays and waterside are thronged with panic-stricken refugees, who are in the direst straits, being hungry and threatened by marauding robbers. Foreign destroyers anchored in the harbor and kept searchlights on the crowds throughout a terrible night to protect them, while a cordon of regular Turkish soldiers also guarded them.

The woman hief of the American Collegiate Institute alleges that a Turkish sergeant or officer entered the first building where the flames started, carrying small tins, apparently of paraffin, and the fire began immediately he departed. It is estimated there are a thousand dead. The European and American financial losses will probably aggregate £12.000,000. The destruction includes the large crowded stores of the Near East relief committee.

Armenian and Greek villages outside the city were also set on fire, with the residential suburbs of Bournabat and Boudja.