BIG CITY BLAZE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20140, 9 January 1940, Page 5

BIG CITY BLAZE

FACTORY DESTROYED SHORT CIRCUIT BLAMED WORKERS 1 HURRIED SUIT DAMAGE TOTALS £IOOO (Per PreßS Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. Sweeping tile factory within a few minutes, fire destroyed the plant and contents of an upholstery workshop in a brick building owned and occupied by Andrews and Clark, furniture manufacturers, yesterday afternoon. As the flames spread rapidly, six young women and -four men working in the factory escaped by means of a a door leading into an adjoining cabinet-making department. The damage to the plant and slock was conservatively estimated at about £IOOO. The fire began in a corner of the factory when an electric motor which had been cleaned during the morning was switched on to operate a flock machine. Apparently a short circuit ignited lengths of rubber hairlock which were stacked alongside. Dash For Exit Before any steps could be taken to extinguish the flames, the highlyinflammable materials were well ablaze. While one man dashed into the adjoining cabinet-making department to telephone the fire brigade, other employees grabbed, any personal belongings that happened to be near at hand and ran for the exit.

Within seconds, so it seemed to members of the staff, the factory was filled with smoke and flame. In one large room of the workshop, separated from the remainder of the building by a poilite partition, six young women were operating sewingmachines. Most of them were obliged to flee without taking even the clothes which they had replaced by smocks during working hours, and the exit was in flames when some passed through into the safety of the cabinetmaking department. Similarly, most of the workmen lost their kits of upholstery tools, each of which was valued at about £5.

v We had absolutely no gaming,” one of the employees subsequently stated. “One minute work was proceeding normally; the next the building seemed to be a sheet of flame. There was no time to save anything. Library books, lunch cases, and tools just had to stay whfcre they were, and we thought we were ■ luckly if we could grab our coats before getting away. Most of the girls had no time to change from their slippers to their shoes, a few of which we subsequently found.”