Several escape from fires

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33694, 18 November 1974, Page 1

Several escape from fires

A man gashed a leg and was burned when he leapt out a window to get away from a fire at his house in Davidson Crescent, Hornby, early on Saturday morning. The house is shown above.

The man, Mr T. N. McKenzie, was taken to hospital by a St John ambulance for treatment and was later discharged. His wife and two children got away from the fire without injury.

A neighbour, Mr D. G. Morrin, said he was having breakfast about 6.30 a.m. when he heard a noise “like a car going down the street backfiring. I looked out the window and saw flames coming from the kitchen window of Mr McKenzie’s house. The fire was apparently going pretty well before they noticed it themselves. “I rang the fire brigade and some neighbours got hoses. The hoses did not make much impression and the house is about threequarters gutted.” Children rescued Five small children were rescued from a house fire in Ward Street, Cobden, early yesterday morning, the Greymouth reporter of “The Press” says. The children were alone in the house at 1 a.m. when neighbours heard the noise of corrugated iron popping. They investigated and called the fire brigade. The children were rescued unscathed although one received hospital treatment after being affected by smoke. The kitchen was extensively damaged and there was smoke damage in other rooms. The police investigated the cause of the fire but said there were no suspicious circumstances. Guests roused Firemen using breathing apparatus roused sleeping

guests as smoke from a kit- 1 chen fire filled the Masonic Hotel, Wellington, early yesterday, the Press Association reports. All 13 residents were! ushered to safety. The fire, started by an efec- j trie toaster, issued forth large amounts of smoke after the soot in the flue of an old | coke-fired range caught i alight. A taxi-driver noticed the fire as he passed the rear of | the hotel, sited in Cuba Street, at 420 a.m. Damage to the kitchen was; minor. Pulled from bach In another fire in Welling-! ton yesterday an elderly man i

.was pulled from his smoke, (filled bach by a neighbour. A mattress set alight by as ■ untended cigarette had filled the bach with smoke. The elderly man wat (attempting to climb out of s window of the bach when he I was noticed by a neighbour, j Damage to the house wat | confined to the mattress. Chinese dies I The name of a middle-aged Chinese man found dead it a house which caught fire ii Fairview Road, Mount Eden Auckland, on Saturday is •til | not available. “We have nd been able to trace the man) [next of kin,” said a polict i spokesman. The body was found on « bed in one of the rooms it the house. An electric blan ket, which was switched op had apparently caught fire. • Police believe the man h«( I been dead for about tw< I weeks.