Vacated girls’ hostel hit by fire

Press, 30 May 1987, Page 8

Vacated girls’ hostel hit by fire

By

NEIL CLARKSON

A matron and two friends fled under a shower of shattering glass as fire engulfed part of the Cathedral College hostel last evening. The last girls had left the first-floor hostel for the holiday week-end just one hour before the fire broke out, consuming a dormitory, the ablution area and a hallway. Two other dormitories were smoke-damaged and rooms below water-dam-aged.

The hostel matron, Mrs Jill Malpas, said it was lucky the fire occurred when the dormitories were empty. “It all went up so quickly. How on earth would we have got the girls out?”

The Fire Service received the call to the school, at the corner of Barbadoes Street and Ferry Road, at 7.25 p.m. They arrived to find flames leaping through windows at the rear of the wooden hostel.

Firemen stopped the fire spreading to two adjoining brick buildings, one a convent and the other forming part of the hostel.

Mrs Malpas said she was in her downstairs flat with two friends.

“We thought we could smell smoke but we thought it was my heater. I also had clothes in my dryer so I went to check that.

"There was smoke in the hallway and the whole top of the place was on fire. The windows were

just starting to break. “I yelled out to my friends. I said ‘Quick, get out’."

One of her friends began heading upstairs to investigate the fire but she called to him to get out.

They ran from the flat with Mrs Malpas’s pet cockatiel under a shower of glass from the shattering windows.

“I ran to the convent and kept ringing the bell and all of a sudden people started appearing from the cathedral.”

Mrs Malpas said fifthform and sixth-form dormitories appeared affected by the blaze. "it went up very quickly. It seems like a nightmare,” she said, watching firemen dampen

down the last of the blaze. A divisional officer of the Fire Service, Mr David Johnstone, said fire damage was confined to the upper floor. The fire was prevented from spreading to the adjoining brick buildings.

“There is some water damage to the floor below.”

Although at least eight fire engines attended, only four were used to control the blaze.

The last girls had left the hostel about 6.30 p.m. Mrs Malpas went through it about 40 minutes before the fire was noticed.

Fire-safety officers were investigating the cause last evening.

Mr Johnstone said the blaze was not thought to be suspicious.