FIRE DESTROYS HOUSE

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27632, 13 April 1955, Page 12

FIRE DESTROYS HOUSE

FAMILY LOSES ALL POSSESSIONS

DOG WHICH GAVE ALARM DIES IN FLAMES

A few smouldering joists and a heap of rubble were all that remained of -the home of Mr L. Lake, of 33 Curlett’s road, Upper Riccarton, less than an hour after fire broke out in the kitchen just before 8 o’clock lasUevening. Mr Lake, his wife, and two of his sons who were home at that time had only a few seconds to escape before the 70-year-old four-roomed wooden house was an inferno. Mr Lake, who was on his bed when the fire started, and Mrs Lake, who was in the kitchen, suffered minor injuries. Mr Lake saw flames coming through his door and had to escape through his window. When he dived through the opening, the right side of his face was burnt. He was treated by a fireman, and was able to help the brigadesmen in a hopeless task. The house was not insured, and there was no insurance on the furniture. Mr Lake said last night that after years of battling he had almost completed paying for the house. The alarm was given by the Lakes’ four-year-old dog Paddy, a Labradorsheepdog cross, which has been the inseparable companion of Brian Lake, aged 17, and Paul Lake, aged 18, since he was a puppy. Mr Lake was almost asleep, but was roused by the barking of the dog, and saw the flames coming into his room. He did not have time to do anything but get through the window, and he was left without even a pair of boots in which to work. It was the dog which also drew the attention of Mrs Lake and her sons to the fire. They were sitting in the kitchen, where the fire began, and the dog was with them. In a few brief seconds the flames were roaring through the building. Almost immediately part of the kitchen collapsed, and the dog, caught in the fall, died in the flames. Mrs Lake and her sons got out through the kitchen door only moments before the collapse of part of the house, so rapidly did the flames take possession. A little later Mrs Lake tried to retrieve some personal possessions, and in the attempt she suffered burns to a foot. She and her sons were later taken to relatives living in Islington. Chimney Collapses

When the alarm was received at the Central Fire Station, firemen who had just returned from an exhausting task fighting a scrub fire at Woolston manned a machine, and another was sent from the St. Albans station. The firemen had an almost hopeless task, for at the time the alarm was received the flames were already throwing a lurid glow into the sky. While the firemen fought to control the flames about 50 rounds of .22 ammunition left, with a rifle, in the house crackled above the roar of the flames, and the engines of Harvard aircraft taking off from the nearby R.N.Z.A.F. Station at Wigram, and flying low across the house, added to the din. When the house was no more than a handful of blackened and steaming timbers, two firemen escaped serious injury by no more , than inches. Without warning the chimney collapsed, and although the firemen were only a very few feet apart, the bricks fell in a dusty, bouncing heap neatly between them. By nine o’clock the Lakes’ possessions had been reduced to a pathetically small bundle of clothing. Not only had they lost their home and their furniture; an old model American car belonging to Mr Lake, which had been parked near the house, was completely ruined by the heat. The car was valued at about £75. Mr Lake said there had not been much money in the house. He thought he had had about £5 in his best suit in his bedroom. He lost a valuable radio, and an electric motor he had intended to install to give the house a hot water supply, and a bicycle he had borrowed that same evening from a friend at work. Mr Lake is employed as a foreman by Booth Macdonald and Company. Mr Lake said that the fire was the culmination of six months of bad luck. He had had several set-backs, and had been in ill-health for some time. He thought the fire was caused by a faulty chimney. Although the house was destroyed very rapidly, the fire attracted hundreds of people, and cars were parked all the way along Curlett’s road from Riccarton road to the other side of the Lakes house, a distance of some hundreds of yards. Last night Mr Lake said he did not know where he would begin again after such a loss.