BLENHEIM FEARS THE WORST.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 275, 21 November 1927, Page 5

BLENHEIM FEARS THE WORST.

CROWDS THRONG STREETS.

INNOCENT CAUSE DISCOVERED

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

BLENHEIM, Saturday

All Blenheim believed for a few minutes last night that a disaster had occurred.

At six o'clock the raucous shriek of a siren was heard, and it continued for ten minutes. The men on duty at the fire station, mistaking the sound for an alarm of fire from the gasworks whistle, rang the fire bell, and players on tennis courts and bowling greens dropped racquets and bowls and poured into the streets, while helmeted firemen on bicycles pedalled frantically toward the fire station. A special squad of police turned out, and the River Board inspector, fearing that a cloudburst in the hills had brought the rivers down in unexampled fury, telephoned desperately up-river, seeking information. The Power Board's line gang assembled in case the alarm concerned a break in the main 33,000-volt transmission line.

The rest of the townfolk, abandoning business, gathered in the streets and asked one another what had occurred.

What might have happened next it is hard to say, but at this stage, with the aid of a wet sack, the crew of a steam traction engine succeeded in mastering the whistle, which had been blown as the engine approached an intersection. They had been trying for ten minutes to silence it. After that there was a dead silence, and everybody went home.