FIERCE FIRE IN CONVENT

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 278, 20 August 1938, Page 7

FIERCE FIRE IN CONVENT

Building Destroyed

SISTER RECEIVES SLIGHT BURN

By Telegraph—Press Association.

Auckland, August 19.

Lying a mass of smoking ruins, the Northcote Convent of the Dominican Sisters in Onewa Road, Northcote, is a total loss as the result of a fire which: gutted it at about 11 o’clock this morning. The Mother Prioress and a sister were the only ones in the building at the time of the outbreak and made a hurried escape, during which the sister received a slight burn in the face. The Mother Prioress was uninjured. ■ The convent, known as St. Dominic’s, was the mother house of the order in the North Island, and was under the charge of the Rev. Mother Di Pazzi. The slightly injured nun was the Rev. Sister St. Roche.' The house was established from the Dunedin headquarters of the order in New Zealand in 1933, and its destruction is a serious loss to the sisters.

The house, an eight or nine-roomed single-story structure, was purchased from Mr. A.’Smith. With the addition of a chapel and furnishings, it cost about £3OOO to purchase and equip. It is believed that the seat of the fire was a copper in the laundry in the basement.

Panned by a crosswind, the flames, which gained a firm hold in the laundry unnoticed, swept through the building, and when the Northcote Fire Brigade answered the call, the roof was blazing, and even at that early stage there appeared to be no hope of saving anything. Shortly afterward, the Birkenhead brigade arrived to give help, and together they fought a losing battle against the flames. So quickly was the building gutted, and so fierce were the flames that there was a likelihood of the fire spreading to an adjoining house. This was averted. Walls and Roof Collapse. The- walls and roof collapsed in surprisingly short time, leaving heaps of tangled iron, bricks and charred woodwork, with one chimney standing as solitary sentinel over the still smoking and burning mass that is all that is left.

Very few people .were witnesses of the fire. The attention of neighbours was first drawn to the scene when they heard excited cries', and, rushing outside, saw the two sisters making their hurried exit from the building. One of them had been slightly injured in trying to save a few objects, but they had been forced back by the rapid spread of the flames. Otdinarily five sisters live iu the convent, .which is across the road from the school and the church, but this morning only two were in residence, the others being away. > In the house they bad their own chapel and music and nrt classrooms. There were three pianos and a number of valuable objects belonging to the chapel. Nothing was saved. All the sisters have now are the habits in which they escaped. There is another house of the order at Helensville, and the Mother Prioress and Sister St. Roche will Jake up their residence there, it is understood. until some arraugemeiit is made for the re-establishment of the order in Auckland.