DAMAGED BY WATER.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 72, 26 March 1909, Page 8

DAMAGED BY WATER.

A floor tap attached to a rubber tube which carries water to a dental basin, situated in a parlour on the first floor of Winder's Buildings, Manners-street and Cuba-street, was left turned on last night. The tube has other tap attachments which prevent the escape of water, and it is understood that nothing untoward ocouired until about midnight, when the vater in the maias i cached its highest pressure. Then, it is thought, th>3 rubber tubing must have betn b.owp off the piping, permitting! a voluminous escape of water. The fluid ran along a passage-way, found escape through the lower ceiling, coursed along the ground floor of the ironmongery depirtmsnt at Winder's, and finally found an abiding level in the basement, where piles of fencing wire, some 800 kegs -of nails, and many other solid articles were stored. The kegs were piled on top of each other, but the water reached them from the top downwards, thereby making tn"e damage worse than it might have been. The fencing wire comparatively escaped wetring and injury, though dampness may cause some rust, but many other articles in the basement were prejudicially afteded. T< h-i.s been estimated that many thousands of gallons of water escaped, and the flood below stairs and on the ground floor was so great that some twenty employees were engaged all this morning in mapping up the water and carrying it away. The metal ceiling of the shop is supposed to bo holding water between it and the floor immediately a,bovn, and opinions were expressed that to prevent the spoiling of rhe ceiling by rust the whole of it would have to be taken down and dried — an expensive proceeding. All the windows on the Cuba-street extension side received water «n them, with resulting damage to the contents, and some showcases in the shop, containing builders' steel tools of an expensive nature, were affected to such an extent that rust was visible on the contents by 10.30 a.m. Stock ranged along the walls, articles of the widely-varied nature which form an ironmongery stock, received streams of water, and there were to be seen in the shop great heaps of saturated boxes r.nd pictures, wet tinware and brassware, steel and iron articles, and so forth, placed handily by the assistants for drying and other remedial measures. An inspection of the stock was made this morning by Messrs. C. C. Crump and P. H. Miller, who estimated the damage done at a sum which runs into four figures. Mr. Winder was in 'the shop up till 10 o'clock last night without seeing or hearing any indication of an escaps of water, and an employee of the dental company, who left at 9 p.m., is sure that everything was normal at that hour.