NARROW ESCAPE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 43, 1 December 1941, Page 4

NARROW ESCAPE.

FIRE AT COMMERCIAL HOTEL.

LODGER’S BEDDING ABLAZE. Apparently started by a cigarette end which fell from a lodger’s mouth when he went to sleep, bedding in a room at the Commercial Hotel in East Street blazed up about 2.30 o’clock yesterday morning. The lodger had a narrow escape from burns, but as it was his shirt was burnt on one side liefore he awakened to find the bed clothes, the pillows and the mattress on fire.

Leaping out of bed, the lodger threw up the window of his room and tossed the burning pillows and clothing out of the loom. Unfortunately, the window gives on to an enclosed area of the hotel, which for the first floor is a hollow square, and the burning material fell oni the roof of what was at one time used as a dining room. The kapoc at once 1 blazed up and the flames were licking up the side of the walls when the Ashburton Volunteer Eire Brigade arrived. The bucket pumps which the brigade recently acquired were put into action and were sufficient to cope with the outbreak, hut not before some scorching had been done to walls. In the meantime, the hotel had become full of smoke a nd other lodgers were hastily collecting their belongings and getting out of their rooms.

Had the fire taken a. proper hold on the building the brigade would have been hard put to it to save the structure, while the other large wooden building next door would have been in imminent danger.