COAL DEPOT BLAZE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 33, 9 February 1943, Page 4

COAL DEPOT BLAZE

FIREMAN BADLY HURT SUFFERS ELECTRIC SHOCK

Through coming in contact with a hicrh tension wire while on dutj at a fire "n tile Pukemiro .CoMev,es deoot Porters Avenue, Eden lei race, last evening, Mr. William John Beech, an auxiliary member of tne Mount Eden Fire Brigade aged 19, son of Mr. T. W. Beech, the station officer at the Mount Eden station, received a severe electric shock. A St. John ambulance was called, and the injured man taken to the Auckland Hospital. His conaition to-day was reported fair. The fire broke out shortly aftei 10 o'clock, spreading quickly in the dry timber. By the time fire engines from the Central, Mount Eden and Mount Albert stations arrived the flames had a good hold on a 10ft pile of timber outside the shed, and had also spread inside the building to reach stores of coal, wood and other inflammables. The firemen, including members of the Emergency Fire Service, quickly gained the upper hand by working from both sides and across the northern railway line running beside the premises. Firemen who entered, the building prevented further small fires from spreading to some railway wagons on a siding. Some hundreds of pounds worth of coal and wood were destroyed, and the framework and roof of the shed damaged, but the isolation of the fire prevented its spread to a nearby joinery or to houses and railway buildings. Leads across the railway line delayed a south-bound mixed goods and passenger train which reached Porter's Avenue crossing after the fire had started, and the train reached the Auckland station at 11.39 p.m., over half an hour late.

Thomas Arkle Turnbull, only son of Mrs. E. Turnbull, of 6, Landscape Road, Epsom, who has gained a commission in the R.N.Z.N.V.R. Sub-Lieutenant Turnbull left New Zealand under Scheme B in January, 1942. After a training period in England he served for five months on a convoy engaged in work to Russia, and was in action in September last protecting a convoy said to have been one of the largest to reach Russia. Sub-Lieutenant Turnbull was educated at the Auckland Grammar School.