BIG CITY FIRE.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 17 February 1931, Page 7

BIG CITY FIRE.

Sweeps Block of Four Buildings BRIGADE FORCED TO DIVIDE AUCKLAND, Last Night. The largest fire in Auckland for many years occurred to-night sweeping a block of four buildings running from Federal Street to Hobson Street. The buildings destroyed are:— Modern Shoes Limited, incorporating the Northern Boot and Shoe Manufacturing Coy., Ltd. manufacturers and importers. Lichcnstein Arnoldson and Coy., gum merchants. Warren Engineering Coy., mechanical and general engineers. Cairns and Woodward, tent and sail makers. The fire burned for several hour providing a most spectacular sight, the flames shooting to a great height. At the same time a big Are broke out at Partington’s flour mill in Symonds street. The two outbreaks were raging together and taxing the resources of the fire brigade. Suburban brigades were called in to assist. At first it seemed the lire would be confined to the premises of Modern Shoes which was a seething inferno but then suddenly, the flames burst into the buildings fronting Hobson Street and soon the four-storied premises of Lichcnstein’s was ablaze and spreading with amazing rapidity, Warrens and Cairns wero soon enveloped by the huge flamed which were now burning fiercely over a wide area. It soon became evident the four buildings were doomed. For some time sheets of fire rose from the doomed buildings, the walls of which began to fall. The roar of explosions, the flash of fire leaping upward and the crash of falling debris made the scene terrifying. Gradually an upper hand was gained and the spread of the flames checked but not before the fire had been burning for two hours. It is impossible to estimate the damage.