TRAPPED BY FLAMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 223, 20 September 1929, Page 8

TRAPPED BY FLAMES.

MOTHER SAVES CHILDREN

STRUGGLE THROUGH SMOKE. DOOR WOULD NOT OPEN. ESCAPE THROUGH SIDE WINDOW. Tongues of flame leaping round her as she struggled, Mrs. A. Payne snatched her two-month-old baby from its cradle, and seizing a two-vear-old child from its cot, she made a desperate rescue of her children when she found her house at Hill Street, Newmarket, in flames early this morning. Through dense smoke, Mrs. Payne staggered to the front door, only to find that it was warped by the heat, and would not open. Down the hall she traced her way to the living room at the back. With a tight grip on her children she fought her way to the window, threw it open, dropped the children gently on the ground outside, and then struggled after them. Mother and children were safe!

When the fire broke out, some time after midnight, Mrs. Payne was awakened by the crackling of leaping flames. Fortunately, the children were in the front room with their parents, and while Mr. Payne rushed for help, and tne Newmarket fire bell tolled, Mrs. Payne rushed for her children. Perhaps if they had been in the room at the back, where they usually slept, they would have been burned to death.

Within a few minutes the place whs like an inferno inside, and when the Newmarket Fire Brigade arrived flames were leaping from the windows, and the whole street was aglow with reflection. Three streets away the glare was seen in the sky by a man on his way home. It was he who lang the fire bell.

Little was saved from the fire which raged inside. The Paynes had been in the house only a week. Immediately after the fire Mrs. Payne and her children were taken in a taxi to friends at Otahuhu.

Inside, the five-roomed house was gutted practically from end to end, two rooms escaping with only minor damage. On a wall of one of the front rooms hung a crucifix, and although the tongues of flame swept all round it, the little symbol was unharmed.