DAMAGED BY FIRE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31771, 30 August 1968, Page 1

DAMAGED BY FIRE

Three fire engines and an ambulance sped to a blazing house in Pages Road yesterdayafternoon when it was reported that the 89-year-old.woman occupier was inside, but the report was wrong.

'The old wooden house, with shingles under the iron roof, was blazing when firemen from the New Brighton and Headquarters Stations arrived.

Firemen, wearing breathing apparatus, searched the house, still burning, within 10 minutes of ‘heir arrival, but found nobody. Then a neighbour reported having seen the occupier, Mrs Elizabeth Sedgley, catch a bus into town about 10 a.m.

The alarm was given at 2.12 p.m. after the fire had started in the washhouse at the rear of the house. The fire spread up the lean-to roof of the washhouse on to the main roof. An attic was gutted, and the fire burnt through the ceiling in two of the rooms downstairs. Firemen tore off 30 sheets

of corrugated iron to stop the spread of fire in the shingles. The roof was damaged beyond repair by the fire, and severe damage was done to the interior. Firemen were at the bouse for two hours and a half making sure the fire was out. It flared up in the roof several times.

Mrs Sedgley was dumbfounded when she returned home about 4 p.m. She walked past three fire engines, ploughed through ankle-deep water, ignored falling roofing iron and shouts, and had to be stopped by a policeman when she went to go into the house.

She is being looked after by her son, Mr J. A. Sedgley, of Belfast, and his wife. The fire was started by ashes from a fireplace that Mrs Sedgley had put in the washhouse before she went to town.

The photograph shows Constable J. Broad, of New Brighton, supporting Mrs Sedgley outside her home, with Station Officer R. Fitchett, by the ladder, and a fireman of the New Brighton Volunteer Brigade.