A GREAT FIRE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 296, 27 September 1935, Page 5

A GREAT FIRE

£1,000,000 WORTH OF STORES.

A WAREHOUSE IN LONDON.

200 POLICE CONTROL CROWDS,

(United Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, September 26.

A spectacular fire, fortunately involving no Ipss of life, broke out at the Colonial Wharf at Wapping last night, and soon hundreds of! firemen with 35 engines and two fire-floats were fighting the blaze. It was the biggest fire in London for many years, and raged for 12 hours, completely gutting a seven-storey building and destroying stores of rubber, tea, and spirits valued at £1,000,000.

The Colonial Wharf is the largest in this reach of the river, and the floors where the fire is located house rubber, tea and Oriental products. Alost of the firemen wore gas masks. Two hundred policemen were needed to control 1 the watching crowds. Alcn and women in evening dress left their dinners in the West End and hastened to the scene in taxis. Pleasure steamers crowded with people cruised as near to the blaze as the heat would allow.

Flames from the burning rubber shot 100 feet in the air, bathing the city and the river in a. great red glow. Within five hours the whole building was a roaring furnace. There was a terrifying scene when the great riverside wall crashed, hiremen scrambled! to safety just in time, but blazing debris fell on four barges, destroying them. Streams of molten rubber ran down the streets and blocked tli* drains, while a film of burning rubber spread over the Thames.