LONDON HORROR.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 70, 3 January 1941, Page 6

LONDON HORROR.

BLAZING PETROL IN BASEMENT. AUSTRALIAN GIRL’S ESCAPE. LONDON, December 14. Streams of blazing petrol poured down on shelterers entombed in a London garage basement when a bigli-ex-plosive bomb wrecked the building in a recent raid.

The nightmare scenes were describe'd by a Brisbane girl, Miss Flora. Findlay, who was one of the few to escape being burned to death or crushed under an avalanche of masonry. She cut her feet to ribbons as she rushed to safety in bare feet over broken glass. “I was blown out of my bunk when the bomb fell directly on the building, which was being used as an auxiliary fire station and shelter,” she said. “The bomb crashed through two storeys of reinforced concrete, instantly killing eight firemen, who were racing off to another fire, and finally bursting in the basement.

“Luckily I was in a bunk at the far end, but the majority of at least 20 persons immediately below tlie explosion were entombed. “Others sleeping in stored cars, the roofs of which protected them from debris, were trapped when burning petrol poured down on them. “They were mainly firemen who were sleeping from exhaustion after continual fire-fighting in the early days of the blitzkrieg. “It was a most frightful awakening. I was barefooted and clad only in a silk nightdress. Flames from the blazing petrol lit the blackness and the air was full of choking petrol fumes and dust. Impulse to Die. “Men and women "tfere screaming in agony near the main exit, which the flames blocked. I groped blindly, stumbling over jagged debris, searching for the emergency outlet, and expecting every second that the main petrol tanks would blow up. % “For 15 minutes, which seemed a century, a fireman and I sought the exit, then the fireman vanished, ‘probably knocked senseless by falling bricks, one of which had already injured my head. Finally, I found the outlet, hut after going a few yards discovered that the door was locked.

“I was so frantically disappointed exhausted and horrified that I almost surrendered to the impulse to lie down and die,, but feeling upward I found a glass panel, which I smashed with a brick.

“The glass cut my hands, but I clambered through and hastened barefooted up the stairs and across the pavement which was littered with broken glass. When A.R.P. men were taking me to hospital two more bombs burst on the roadway. “I am eager now to return to Australia, because an escape like mine could not be repeated. But I do not want to risk being torpedoed.” Miss Findlay has now recovered.

The tops of a few of the 50 burnedout cars are' still distinguishable amid the tons of wreckage in the basement. “I sheltered during the previous night’s bombing in that one,” Miss Findlay said, indicating a £I2OO car which was burned out.

“At least six people are still under that debris.”