TRAPPED ON ROOF.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 134, 8 June 1926, Page 17

TRAPPED ON ROOF.

FAMILY CUT OFF BY FLAMES.

EYEBROWS SINGED,

NERVE-WRACKING EXPERIENCE.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June 3. Six persons found themselves trapped by flames on the roof of Linden Court, an old office building at the interseelion of Market and Castlereagh Streets, Sydney, on Sunday morning, when fire broke out and cut off their retreat.

Caretaker Adey, with his wife, three -ons, and a Miss Eyles, who was staying with them for the week-end, slept in rooms which open out on to the roof of ihe building. Their only exit to the :-treet level was by a. stairway leading ironl the roof.

A pedestrian saw flames in the building soon after 12.30 a.m. on Sunday, and iie warned the fire brigade. At that time the flames were burning in the lift well on the ground floor, but in another five minutes they had shot up the lift well and extended to all the floors.

Adey was awakened by the crackling of the flames, and he raced round and u"oke all the others. When they tried to get downstairs they found, .that the stairway was a roaring inferno, while the lire was consuming the doorposts. on the roof top with such speed that they collapsed while the half-awakened family was considering the best thing to do. Their plight was desperate, for there was no escape next door, the building having been almost completely demolished. Step by step they were driven back across the roof, and from the parapet they made many ineffectual attempts to attract the notice of firemen in the street. They were standing in a corner of the roof, with the fire eating its way across the ruberoid covering, when someone saw them from the street below and told the firemen.

Ladders were procured afc once, but it was found necessary to break through tbe roof of a shop adjoining the building, many feet below where they were trapped, to get the ladders to work. Mrs. Ader was in a state of collapse when she was carried down, but the others were able to descend the ladder without assistance.

Some idea of the position they were f<x when the firemen rescued them may he gained from the fact that the hair and eyebrows of Adey, the caretaker, and one of his sons, was singed by the flames. The building was severely damaged by fire.