RESCUED FROM FIRE

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28346, 3 August 1957, Page 14

RESCUED FROM FIRE

Elderly Man Saves Two Children

(New Zeaiana Press Association) AUCKLAND, August 2. A South African War veteran, 79-year-old Mr Jim Le Gfros. late yesterday afternoon dashed through “almost unbearable heat and smoke” to rescue two young children from the burning home of Mr and Mrs Douglas Aldred in Wood street, Ponsonby, Auckland. Mr Le Gros shrugged off the rescue today, saying it “was nothing really. I’d done it before I realised it.” He said he saw thick smoke pouring from the house. Then he heard eight-months-old Fay and 20-months-old Carol Aldred screaming. He just ran through the open door to the fiercely burning livingroom and brought out first Fay and then Carol. Mrs Aldred said she came out of a neighbour’s house to see smoke everywhere about her own home. She saw Mr Le Gros stumble out with ’Fay, highchair and all, put her down on the footpath, cough a little, and rush back inside for Carol. “He just stood there coughing and gasping, tears rolling down his face until the fire brigade arrived.” After the fire was under control the Chief Fire Officer, Mr G. Drummond, congratulated Mr Le Gros. “I don’t know how you did it,” he said. “The heat and smoke in there was almost unbearable.”