ANOTHER ALARM OF FIRE.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 596, 21 December 1869, Page 2

ANOTHER ALARM OF FIRE.

SUPPOSED INCENDIARISM. An alarm of fire in Westport on Saturday morning was the more alarming as it was the fourth within a fortnight. It was the most alarming of the four because it happened at an untimely hour for people being easily aroused, and because it occurred in that block of buildings which had previously had three narrow escapes. Even as an event which is past, it is more alarming than the other alarms, because the fire which on this occasion caused alarm was clearly the result of a deliberate, determined, but fortunately futile attempt at incendiarism. Two of the other fires were apparently accidental. This one was as obviously the result of no accident, and the presence of an incendiary in their midst makes property-holders and all others in town more alarmed than they otherwise would be. The circumstances under which the fire occurred are to-day to be the subject of an inquiry ; but, with or without the assistance of an intelligent jury, there need be no hesitation in saying that much—that it was the result of an act of incendiarism. How, why, or by whom this act of incendiarism was perpetrated will be particularly the subject of the jury's inquiry ; and therefore this is not the time to refer to the circumstances in detail. Suffice it that, as the story is told, Mr Fagg, the night-watchman, who has a faculty for the discovery of fires, saw a red glare of light on the roof of the Steam Packet Hotel, or the house adjacent, in the Esplanade. Ho was in Gladstone street; the hour two o'clock in the morning. He cried " Fire," and ran—ran to the Esplanade or the river front of the block of buildings in which the fire appeared. Some others who were about the street ran after him ; boarders of late habits in the Empire Hotel followed; lodgers did the same when they had found their way into their trowsers ; and from other houses near there was an efflux of inmates in their night costume. In the Esplanade there is a house known as Stewart's Waterman's Arms Hotel. It consists of a " flash " front built upon an old store part of which protrudes as an excrescence at one end, and stands unoccupied. In this unoccupied part there is a short flight of stairs leading to an attic extending over the whole building, and also unoccupied. Flames were seen to be issuing from the roof a foot or two from the top of the stairs, and they were fast spreading upwards. Had the discovery been delayed a few minutes longer, the whole building—probably the whole block—would have been destroyed. As it was, it was made "in the nick of time," and there was no waste of time or energy in the work of extinguishing the fire by those who were first on tho spot. Water of an abominable odour was thrown upon it freely; some more was got from the river, and in a quarter of an hour the danger was over. Mr Hughes, Mr Corr, and others whose property was in jeopardy were indefatigable; and others less interested readily rendered assistance. When the fire was thus extinguished, there was discovered, close to the hole made in the roof by tho fire, and lying on the floor, a quantity of paper, old collar-boxes, and ham-bones which had apparently been saturated with kerosene. They were not immediately on the spot where the fire occurred, but this was apparently due to the quantity of water thrown there, by which they were floated a few feet away. Of course these papers, partially preserved as they were, may constitute a link in the evidence, if there is any as to the person by whom the fire was caused; and of these we say nothing. From their position and condition, and from the absence of any other articles in the attic, the presumption is that some one had gone no further than the short flight of stairs, and, placing the papers under the roof, set them on fire, and "slid." This ho might easily do, at that hour, unobserved, as the Esplanade is a desert place at any time, or, by leaping a fence, he might either escape into the Empire Hotel yard or others adjacent. The lower storey of the house in which the fire took place is occupied by a family, but anyone might ascend the flight of steps without arousing them. Other houses contiguous are vacant, and they are of such material that, had they once caught, there would have been little or no chance of saving any of the block, including the entire length of the Esplanade, and the Gladstone street and Freeman street frontages. Since the fire, naturally alarmed as they have been, residents on the block have formed themselves into a Vigilance Committee, and have acted in turn as Volunteer Nightwatchmen ; but no doubt the incendiary is equally watchful, and, if he means it, " will bide his time," though what purpose he can possibly have served himself or others on this occasion, or could serve at any other time, it is impossible to divine. The inquest as to the cause of the fire takes place before the Coroner this afternoon, at three o'clock.