LOSS FROM FIRES

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28451, 4 December 1957, Page 15

LOSS FROM FIRES

Estimate Of £2,000,000

<Rec. 9 p.m.‘ SYDNEY. Dec 3. The heart of rhe Blue Mountains looked as though someone had turned a giant blow-torch on it., a reporter who visited the scene’of yesterday s bushfires disaster said today. The Blue Mountains police have assessed The fire damage at £2,000,000. ‘Chimneys stand out of heaps of twisted roofing iron,” said the reporter. ‘Gaunt-eyed men, who answered calls for help elsewhere, are returning to streets they doj no recognise, their homes destroyed, while they helped save others.” A young couple who returned from their honeymoon to their new home in the Blue Mountains township of Leura a week ago lost everything they possessed in yesterday's bushfire. Today they searched among the ruins for the remains of their wedding presents and a valuable collection of recorded music. AU they are left with are the clothes which they were wearing when they went oft to work yesterday. At Wingham today, 19-y ear-old labourer, Mervyn Green, was sentenced to six months’ gaol with hard labour for lighting a fire in the open. The Court was told that the fire burned out 10 acres and threatened two homes. Green pleaded guilty to a charge of lighting a fire during a prohibited period. The lighting of cigarettes, pipes and. cigars in the open has been banned throughout New South Wales, including the city of Sydney. The New South Wales Bushfire Committee has also banned the use of blow torches in the open, ♦he use of backyard incinerators, end the lighting of campfires. Penalties for breaches of the committee’s order are a maximum of two years’ imprisonment, a £2OO fine, or both.