SEAMAN’S ORDEAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 February 1939, Page 4

SEAMAN’S ORDEAL

FOUND ON VERANDAH ROOF WITH BROKEN LEG. BROUGHT DOWN BY FIRE BRIGADE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. The police. Fire Brigade and St John Ambulance all congregated in 1 Lichfield Street early yesterday morning to rescue Frederick Cable, an able seaman, aged 36, of H.M.S. Leith, who was found about five o’clock in the morning by a nightwatchman lying on the verandah roof of a building, with his right leg fractured. Some unknown errand had taken Cable up a fire escape on the building during the night and he had fallen off, landing on the verandah roof below. fracturing his leg and being knocked unconscious. The noise of his fall, which occurred about midnight, attracted the attention of a policeman on patrol below, but after a fruitless search for the cause of the disturbance, the constable moved on. At about 4.30 a.m., when he recovered consciousness, Cable began to rattle energetically on windows near him and succeeded in attracting the attention of a nightwatchman, who summoned the police. It was found impossible to rescue the injured man without a ladder, so the Fire Brigade ■was called and he was quickly brought down and placed in a waiting ambulance.

Cable is now in the Christchurch Public Hospital, his condition being satisfactory. ■