BOY RESCUED FROM FIRE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27375, 14 June 1954, Page 8

BOY RESCUED FROM FIRE

OLD HOUSE GUTTED YOUTH ENTERS BLAZING BEDROOM (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 13. A 17-year-old youth saved his eight-year-old brother from certain death when fire roared through their home at 76 Cleveland street, Brooklyn, Wellington, on Saturday night. The rescuer was Graham Roberts, who pulled the half-unconscious boy out of a smoke-filled bedroom while flames licked up the wallpaper and around them. The child, Warren Roberts, was not injured. Graham Roberts suffered a deep cut along his left hand and lower forearm.

The house, an old five-roomed wooden building in the Brooklyn shopping area, was gutted. Its occupants, Mr and Mrs, J. E. Roberts and their family of four, lost all their personal effects, which were not insured.

The fire apparently broke out in the washhouse at the rear of the house shortly after 10 p.m. At 10.15 p.m., Mr and Mrs Roberts drove to the city to pick up their 14-year-old daugher, Kay. Knowing that their eldest son would be home within 15 minutes, ‘ they thought it sdfe to 'leave the youngest boy alone and asleep in a front room.

At 10.20 p.m., Kay Roberts returned home by tram, and found smoke pouring out of the house. Running down the path, she met Graham with two friends, told them, and summoned the fire brigade. The three youths raced to the front door and found the hallway an inferno. Graham ran to the front of the house, climbed up to a window sill, smashed the glass, and jumped into the youngest boy’s bedroom. Interviewed today, Mr and Mrs Roberts said they had lost nearly everything they possessed. Their losses include a refrigerator, a new knitting machine, and a number of watches which Mr Roberts had been repairing.