ANOTHER FIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 45, 23 February 1939, Page 14

ANOTHER FIRE

NEW PAPER STORE

SALVATION ARMY LOSS

The paper store at the Salvation Army Home at Miramar, which was being rebuilt on the site of a store that was destroyed by fire late last year, caught fire from an incinerator in one end of the building about 11 a.m. today and was practically destroyed. The building was a galvanised iron structure 60 feet long by 45 feet wide* with a double gable roof, and. although it was not quite completed, it was practically filled with bales of waste paper waiting to be shipped to the paper mills for repulpirlg. A brick incinerator at the north end of the building was being used for burning paper that was not worth baling, when a strong gust of wind came down the chimney and blew a supply of burning paper into the store. There were seven men working in the store at the time and they tried to prevent a fire, but the high wind gave the blazing fragments a hold in the stored paper and the men had to get out of the "building to avoid being smothered. By the time the Wellington Fire Brigade arrived the paper and building were blazing from end to end and part of the roof fell in before the fire could be checked. The piles of paper were difficult to extinguish and most of the iron in the building was badly damaged by the heat. BUILDING WORTH £800. There were about 300 tons of paper in the building when the fire broke out and one of the two lorries used for collecting the paper in the city was ready to discharge a load. The building was valued at £800, but the men working there did not know whether the contractor had it insured or not. The paper was insured for about onethird of its value. There are fifty men in the Salvation Army Home at the present time, and as their only occupation was the collecting, sorting, and baling of the paper they will be thrown out of work for a time. The danger of the incinerator starting a fire was realised before the building was commenced, and precautions were taken to guard against what happened this morning. Baffles were put into the furnace -to check down-blasts in a northerly wind, and a concrete wall was built between the paper and the furnace door, but these precautions proved to be insufficient.