GORSE FIRE

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 December 1940, Page 10

GORSE FIRE

WELLINGTON DISTRICT BLAZE

[per press association.]

WELLINGTON, December 30!

Heavy smoke rolling over Wellington yesterday evening came from one of the most extensive and spectacular gorse fires that have taken place in the nearer suburbs of the city during recent years. Raging from 2 o’clock in the afternoon until the early hours of the moiming, it consumed some hundreds of acres of gorse between Melrose and Houghton Bay. Turned by a change of wind and the efforts of fire-fighters from houses along the summit of the hill, it threatened with destruction, the Salvation Army’s Eventide Home for elderly women at Mersey Street. ' Firemen ,of the Constable Street and Miramar brigades fought the fire from about 5 p.m. until after midnight. For some hours they were kept busy holding it back with hoses from the Eventide Home.

The origin of the fire is not known, j It is understood to have started early ' in the afternoon on the lower slopes. | Fanned by a fresh northerly breeze, it raced up the hillsides and gullies, ! crackling through the heavier stands of gorse. Towards the end of the afternoon it was advancing on a group of houses, and not until then was the brigade summoned.