FIGHT TO SAVE HOMES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 15, 19 January 1944, Page 6

FIGHT TO SAVE HOMES

BLAZE NEAR AUCKLAND

P.A. AUCKLAND, January 18. Kesidents of 21 houses in O'Rorke Road and Church Street, Penrose, vacated their homes this afternoon, and in one residence an aged invalid had to be evacuated as a fierce scrub fire swept over about 40 acres of adjoining land and endangered the houses. Through the efforts of about 200 men and women, including the! staffs of four metropolitan fire stations, j the damage was confined to a private garage and some fowl-houses and desfruction of ducks and hens. i The fire started in the midst of a large expanse of gorse and grass. A strong wind was blowing and in a short time tongues of flame were shooting high through a heavy volume of smoke and spreading rapidly. Many women occupants of houses in O'Rorke Road connected their garden hoses to taps and filled wash tubs to combat the danger. When the firemen arrived, flames were sweeping eastward to that locality along a broad front and at the height of the conflagration, the flames roared through clumps of 9ft high gorse and shorter fern and grass over a distance of several . hundred yards. The fire was checked as it encroached on the gardens and lawns of some of the residences.