BOMB WRECKS HOME

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 16 August 1935, Page 9

BOMB WRECKS HOME

OUTRAGE AT SYDNEY FAMILY’S NARROW ESCAPE FIRE FOLLOWS EXPLOSION. A bomb completely wrecked the home of Mr R. W. Hall, at Daceyville, Sydney, shortly before 11 o’clock on the night of August 3. 'lhc residents had extraordinary escapes. A young daughter sleeping in a cot was found by her father covered with bricks, but was not injured. A fire followed the explosion, but was extinguished by -the police before it hqd reached serious proportions. Detectives found that a long fuse had been laid across the verandah of the house to the bomb, which had been placed under the window of a room in which Mr Hall usually sleeps. Residents of four or five houses on the other side of the street, nearly 80 yards away, found all their front windows shattered. Mr Hall said afterwards that he had only a- confused idea of what had happenedi “In a- very few minutes I would have gone to bed,” he said. “My nine-year-old daughter Shirley was already asleep in the room. I was in the hallway when there was a blastof sound that almost left me senseless. The whole building rocked as though with an earthquake; all the lights went out, bub I rushed into the room where. Shirley was and found that most of the outer wall had collapsed over her bed. I cannot understand now how she escaped. She was half stunned, but apparently without a scratch. My wife and four-year-old son were in another room.” EXTRAORDINARY DAMAGE. An examination of the house afterwards showed the extraordinary damage caused. The outer brick wall of one corner was wrecked and the whole of the roof over this section brought down. This section of the house "as reduced to broken bricks and splintered wood. Broken glass was scattered everywhere. The front door had been blown from its hinges and all that remained of it—a few chaiied planks—was driven, into the wall at the end of a. passage 30ft. away. The room in which the child Shirley, had been sleeping was littered with the remains of a, brick wall, with joists of wood from the verandah, with lumps of plaster and with hi'okcn glass from windows. One Avail looked as though it had been subjected to machine-gun fire, being pitted - with small holes, apparently caused by fragments of brick which had been hurled across the room Avith the force of bullets. The loAver. part of the child’s cot Avas coA'ered Avith debris. The "cot Avas in a corner of the room, against a section of the Avail Avliicli Avithstood the explosion. This fact probably saved the child’s life. NEIGHBOURS ROUSED’.

The noise of the explosion roused hundreds of people. Many claimed to have heard it- more than two miles aAvay. Others a quarter of a- mile aAvay -stated that objects in tlicir homes had rattled. People in the immediate vicinity Avere stunned by the sound and Avere unable to hear clejnly for some time. Mrs M. Phillips, avlio occupies a cottage adjoining Mr Hall’s.home, on the side on which the explosion took place, said afterwards that the noise had been indescribable. “It sounded like the end of the Avorld,” she said. “Tho earth seemed to rock and I thought our house would come doivn about us.”