FIRE TRAGEDY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 February 1940, Page 6

FIRE TRAGEDY

BLAZE IN WELLINGTON HOTEL GIRL FAILS TO ESCAPE FROM TOP FLOOR. BODY FOUND BY BRIGADE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A fire lability occurred early this morning when Miss Kathleen Olive Matthews, aged .17. employed as a waitress, failed to escape from the lintel Lloyds, in Lower Cuba Street. Formerly knqwii as the Columbia Hotel, 1 he building’ is of six stories and is one of Ihe oldest of the larger hotel buildings in Wellington. The fire started on the ground floor dost* to the hot water furnace in the kitchen.

The brigade received an alarm at 4.5 a.m. and arrived within two minutes, but already the fire had broken through the roof and Superintendent Woolley sent out a brigade call, not so much on account of the fire risk as of the risk to human life. There were thirty or more boarders in the place, few of whom had left the building when the brigade arrived. The fire was extraordinary in the terrific speed with which it passed from the ground floor to the sixth floor, roaring up a disused dumbwaiter, the surrounds of which were of plaster board. The consequence was that it showed on every floor and mushroomed out in a terrific blaze on the sixth floor, where Miss Matthews slept alone. Evidently dazed by the fire, she dashed out of her room and made for irre narrow winding stairs. She was turned back before reaching them and ran past her owij room to a room beyona, where her body was found after Ihe fire.

A tragjc aspect is that the window of her room faced directly upon the escape. The window is of the connected swing type, not opening fully as does a sash window, but whether this was the cause of her failure to get out thaj way cannot be known. The brigade made an extraordinary save of a building of lath and plaster partitioning, wopden floors and joists and cardboard wallboard surrounding the main lift well. Their immediate task, after leading in the first hoses, was to assist the boarders to escape through heavy smoke and past danger on every landing to the ground floor, and their difficulties were increased by the fact that the lights had failed before they arrived.

Eight machines and. about GO men were engaged. A very large number of salvage sheets were used to protect furniture and bedding and the loss in this respect is really very small. The parents of Miss Matthews reside in Miramar.