BIG SHOP FIRE IN GLASGOW

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25796, 6 May 1949, Page 7

BIG SHOP FIRE IN GLASGOW

THIRTEEN GIRLS DEAD AT LEAST 24 OTHERS' INJURED LONDON, May 4. Thirteen girlr were killed and about 24 other persons, including two firemen. were injured as a result of a fire in a fashion shop in Argyle street, Glasgow, to-day. Eleven of the dead girls were trapped in the building. Two of five others who, when the fire was fiercest, jumped 50 feet from the roof of the blazing store, died later in hospital. Firemen, operating from turntables rescued several girls, and five wero rushed to hospital suffering from burns and severe shock. Thirty girls were at one time trapped on the roof. In a cinema next to the fashion store, smoke billowed before the screen and members of the audience in a balcony jumped 30 feet from the roof to safety. The roof of the store crashed in flaming debris into the first floor, carrying the bodies of several victims. Many of the girl assistants in the store were rescued by firemen when they were trapped in the upper floors and on the roof. Four girls and two men On a narrow ledge worked their way along the face of the fashion store and the root of the adjoining cinema to the roof of another store. There they were roped by firemen arid lowered down an escape to the street. A constable dashed into the blazing building and rescued five girls. The firemen kept their turntable ladders against the blazing walls of the store to rescue girls so long that when they were wound down, several of the ladders were smouldering. Glasgow’s entire fire-flghting and six ambulances were summoned to the scene.