FIRE IN NAPIER

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10256, 7 June 1911, Page 5

FIRE IN NAPIER

GAIETY THEATRE DESTROYED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.; NAPIER, Last Night. A fire broke out shortly after nine o'clock last night in the Gaiety Theatre, a huge iron structure used for the combined purposes of Thompson and Payne's Pictures and Hawkins and Rome's motor garage. Before the Brigade arrived, the flames, assisted by the inflammable contents of the structure, had taken entire charge of the building, and ef forts had to be concentrated to confining the fire within the limits of the theatre itself. The whole structure was soon a roaring furnace, and, but for the fact that, it was isolated, the fire must have spread. As it was, the shops and dwellings on the south side, in Dickens Street, were badly scorched, and windows were broken. So rapidly did the flames spread that the caretaker of the j building, Mr Munro, and his wife had a narrow escape, the former receiving severe burns. Within half an hour of the alarm being given, the theatre was a mass of smoking debris. The insurances are:—£lsoo in the Sun (£750 reinsured in the New Zealand) ; £SOO in the Northern; and £250 in the Royal. It is impossible yet to get the insurances of the motor stock and furnishings. Messrs Thompson and Payne esti- ; mate their loss at £2OOO, the films de- | st-royed being valued at £BOO. i