FIRE TRAGEDY

Evening Star, Issue 23497, 10 February 1940, Page 12

FIRE TRAGEDY

HOTEL WAITRESS TRAPPED FIREMEN ESCORT BOARDERS TO SAFETY ALL SIX FLOORS ENVELOPED IN FLAME [Peu United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, February 10. A fire fatality occurred early this morning, when Miss Kathleen Olive Matthews, aged 17, employed as a waitress, failed to escape from the Hotel Lloyds in lower Cuba street. Formerly known as the Columbia Hotel, it is of six stories, and is one of the oldest of the larger hotel buildings in Wellington. The brigade received the alarm at 4,5 and arrived witiiin two minutes, but already the fire had broken through the roof, and Superintendent Woolly sent out a brigade call, not so much on account of the fire risk us the risk to human life. There were 30 or more boarders in the place, few of whom had left the building when the brigade arrived. The fire was extraordinary in the terrific speed with which it passed from the ground floor to the sixtli floor, roaring up a disused dumbwaiter, the surrounds of which were of plaster board, the consequence being that it showed on every floor and mushroomed out in a terrific blaze on the sixth floor, where Miss Matthews slept alone. Evidently dazed by the fire, she dashed out of her room and made for the narrow winding stairs. She was turned back before reaching them, and ran past her own room to a room beyond, where her body was found after the fire. The tragic aspect is that the window of her room faced directly upon an escape. It is of the connected swing type, not opening fully ,_ as does a sasn window, but whether this was the cause of her failure to get out that way cannot be known. The brigade made an extraordinary save of the building, which is of lath and plaster partitioning, with wooden floors and joists and cardboard wallboard surrounding the main lift well. Their immediate task after leading in the first hoses was to assist the boarders to escape through the heavy smoke and past danger on every landing to the ground floor, and their difficulties were increased by the fact that the lights had failed before they arrived. Eight machines and about 60 men were engaged. A very large number of salvage sheets were used to protect the furniture and bedding, and the loss in this respect is really very small. Miss Matthews’s parents reside at Miramar.