NARROW ESCAPES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 302, 4 October 1935, Page 6

NARROW ESCAPES

THE GATLINS BUSH FIRES.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FLEE.

ALONG FLAME-FRINGED ROAD,

(Per Press Association). DUNEDIN, This Day. The fires in the Gatlins district are reported to be under control, but it was a close thing. At Tahakopa the d'anger was so pressing that a train with steam up stood in the railway yard ready to evacuate the inhabitants.

In the Puketiro Valley some women and. children were carried to safety along a flame-fringed road, and in a number of districts a major disaster' was avoided! only by the fall of the gale and- a sharp shower of rain. It was probably only this that saved considerable loss of human life.

The worst damage was done at Taliakopa, where Hogg’s mill, with six houses belonging to the.company and occupied by employees, were destroyed. The loss which the company lias suffered is estimated at about £2OOO. Of the families whose homes at the mill were destroyed only one is believed to have had the furniture and effects covered by insurance. Fortunately there was very little sawn timber in the mill, the main portion being stacked well away from the buildings. White’s mill, at MacLennan, was also burned' out, but it had not been working for some time, ‘although a full plant was housed at the mill. Hie other mill destroyed had been abandoned for some years and was really little more than a mill site. It was in the Puketiro Valley that the fire gained l the strongest hold. Here, along one side of a narrow valley, dead Trees, felled to make room for the plough, burned fiercely, and across the railway line the flames were carried into fallen timber among the standing bush. So great was the danger considered to be that women and children were taken out by car along the burning road. It is considered by settlers that had the flames gained hold among the isolated clearings an in scattered homesteads none of them would have escaped alive, as their exit from the valley was blocked by walls of fire on either hand.