TREMENDOUS FIRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 June 1939, Page 6

TREMENDOUS FIRE

IN HEART OF CITY OF LONDON GREAT WAREHOUSES GUTTED UNPRECEDENTED ASSEMBLY OF BRIGADES. DAMAGE OF MILLION STERLING IN SIGHT. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 12.35 p.m.) RUGBY, June 27. The entire fire-fio'hting’ forces of the London County Council are tonight engaged in an effort to control a great conflagration in the heart of the city’s fire danger zone, resulting from a fire that broke out in a five-storey general warehouse on the corner of I lie Barbican and New Zealand Avenue, within a stone’s throw of the Aldersgate Underground Station. Outside fire stations have been urgently told to stand by in case of calls from other parts of the area, since fifty-nine London County Council stations have sent men and appliances to the Barbican. Six giant water-towers poured thousands of gallons of water on the fire, which soon included eight great warehouses, of which four were rapidly gutted. The whole of Aldersgate Street was within a short time flooded to a depth of a foot. Solid sheets of flame swept from building to building, while a vast cloud of smoke rose high over the city. The Post Office in the Barbican was threatened by the encroaching blaze. Up to 9 p.m. it was not known if there had been any loss of life. When the fire first started, there were about a hundred men and women in the various buildings and many had miraculous escapes from death, by getting away over the roofs of other building, and there through their emergency fire escapes. It is feared that the damage will reach a million pounds. A hundred fire appliances of every description, with 400 firemen, were on the scene—the greatest number ever assembled in London on record.