Bridge Club burns

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34012, 28 November 1975, Page 3

Bridge Club burns

Fire gutted the Christchurch Contract' Bridge Club in Nova Place yesterday, causing damage estimated at • SI 90.000. The interior of the six-year-old building, the most; modern of its kind in thej Southern Hemisphere, was j reduced to a charred ruin; only minutes after the fire > broke out at 11.45 a.m. The fire destroyed records: dating back to the formation of the club in 1935, and tro- 1 phies worth about $lOOO. Contractors working on ex-1 tensions to the club believe the blaze might have been > started by sparks from a gas cutting torch. The building was engulfed • by flames only 10 minutes* after workmen finished using* the cutting torch on steel reinforcing in a wall, said a spokesman for the contrac-i tors. Peter Sladen. Ltd. Only one employee of the! company was in the building; when the fire broke out. Michael Briggs, aged 17, i was greeted by roaring • flames and dense smoke when •’

he walked into the main I i lounge. • “I wasn’t going to hang; around,” he said. “I was out] I the nearest door like a shot.” I ; Firemen from the Christ-! I church Central. St Albans,; and Woolston brigades were called to the scene at 11.46 I a.m. after a passer-by saw Ismoke billowing from the | roof of the club. They had to contend with heat so intense that it melted , glass and cracked the con- • Crete block walls of the building. Water from seven appliances was poured on to the flames, but it took about 20 : minutes to bring the blaze • under control. By that time all that reimained of the plushly carpeted and furnished interior was a blackened tangle of I debris and twisted steel fur[niture frames. i Fire safety officers spent! the afternoon sifting through ! the smouldering wreckage, • • but the cause of the blaze j ihad not been firmly estab-1 fished last evening. ; The Christchurch Contract! j Bridge Club is the second • largest in New Zealand, and! !has a membership of nearly l 'llOO.

! Work on the $40,000 extension was well under way before yesterdays fire, but the; iwhole building would now: (have to be pulled down and; ■rebuilt, said the secretary-; manageress of the club (Mrs! D. H. Heaps). She said the complex was! insured for its full replace-! ment value — about $140,000 — but damage to the extension and the contents of the building would increase the cost of the fire to about $190,000. “Hardly anything is salvable,” said Mrs Heaps. “The inside of a refrigerator in the kitchen is the cleanest place in the whole building.” Apart from a few charred membership cards, all the club’s official documents and records had been reduced to ashes, Mrs Heaps said. But she emphasised that i there was no chance of the • club’s closing. “We hope to be operating jin temporary premises by the • start of the bridge season in ! February next year, and as [soon as the insurance claim Icomes through we can start (planning for a new building,” Mrs Heaps said.