Seven dead, 14 hurt in London fire

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32604, 12 May 1971, Page 17

Seven dead, 14 hurt in London fire

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) »

LONDON, May 11. Seven people were killed and 14 were burned or otherwise injured in a blaze which gutted a five-storey hotel in the Kensington district of London in the early hours of this morning.

At the height of the blaze, a young woman jumped from a second-floor window and was impaled on two spikes. Firemen cut away the railings, and she was taken to hospital with a spike still in one of her legs.

While more than 100 firemen battled against the flames, ambulances took about 20 people to were discharged after treatment. , . . , As dawn broke, the search for more victims in the stillsmouldering ruins was intensified. The 74-bedroom building, the Hills Hotel, was undergoing extensive renovation when the fire broke out just after midnight; consequently,

it was accommodating only ab^fX st b s y hotelg and guest houses, the Kensington district is a busy stop-over hotel were tahen to M f et y tn their night clothes. The heat of the Maze cracked the Hills Hotel’s staireases, all of which collapsed to the ground floor, Screaming guests crawled through the smoke to windows, from the ledges of which they were rescued by firemen on turntable ladders. As dazed and burned guests staggered to safety, the police held back crowds of onlookers. A policeman who saw the woman jump from the bedroom window said: “It was terrible. People were screaming and shouting from windows. The woman who jumped, a redhead, aged about 23, lay motionless at first, then managed to lift

her hand up behind her back, and say: "Help me. help me. Doctors arrived and gave her morphine." Some of the foreign tourists taken to safety from the adjoining Langham Hotel watched the Naze in their dressing-gowns. Miss Ayse Akcayy, a Turkish girl who works for her country’s airline, said: “I arrived only last night. When I looked out of my window I could see the flames and hear people screaming and shouting for help." An American, Mr Jack Mitchell, said: "I heard men and women screaming, but we could not see them for smoke. Then the firemen got a light on and I saw a man and girl sitting on a windowsill.

"Firemen got a ladder and brought the girl down first. Then went back for the man, and later I saw them carrying the limp figure of another woman down the ladder."