BUILDING BURNT OUT

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27096, 20 July 1953, Page 10

BUILDING BURNT OUT

FIRE IN MOORHOUSE AVENUE

MAN TO APPEAR ON ARSON CHARGE

A brick building occupied by the Neuchatel Asphalte Company (A’sia.), Pty., Ltd., at 37 Moorhouse avenue was burnt out early on Saturday morning. The building housed the offices of the Christchurch branch of the firm and a store.

Investigations by detectives after the fire resulted in the arrest, late on Saturday afternoon, of a man aged 23, who will appear in the Magistrate’s Court today on a charge of arson. Charges relating to two other fires on July s—one in the ice rink at Centaurus road that caused damage estimated at £7OOO and the other at the bakery of C. E. Boon, Ltd., 221 Colombo street, where damage amounting to about £2OOO was done to office accommodation—will also be preferred against him.

Mr Roy Palmer, who lives at 32 Moorhouse avenue, almost opposite the premises of the Neuchatel Asphalte Company, was awakened by explosions soon after 4 a.m. on Saturday. The building was then well alight, and the fire was casting a glow across the street. Mr Palmer immediately telephoned the Christchurch Fire Brigade from his. home.

The brigade, which received the call at 4.28 a.m., surrounded the building with leads, but all that was left of it yesterday were the walls. Three units from the central fire station and one from Sydenham went to the outbreak. The most serious loss was that of irreplaceable records, said Mr A. E. Attwood, clerk of the company, yesterday. A quantity of bitumen products and thousands of empty tins held in store for filling with bitumen products were also caught in the fire, but the company’s manufacturing plant was undamaged. A three-ton motor-truck parked in a lean-to at the rear of the building had its windshield cracked and was otherwise scorched by the fire, but it is thought to be mechanically sound. The premises are understood to be insured, but details of insurances are held by the headquarters of the company in Auckland. No estimate could be 'obtained yesterday of the amount of the damage. The South Island manager of the company (Mr William Marriott) was in Dunedin at the time of the fire. The nearest house to the fire was that belonging to Mr D. H. Robertson at 31 Moorhouse avenue. The paint on the side of the house nearer the fire ‘was blistered and darkened and windows were cracked and window frames warped.