SISTERS BURNED

Hokitika Guardian, 13 September 1940, Page 8

SISTERS BURNED

TRAGIC FACTORY FIRE.

SYDNEfY. Sep. 7

Two sisters were suffocated and burned to/ death when they were trapped by fire in a furniture factory at Waterloo, a Sydney suburb. They were Clare Jtellct, aged 24, and Neilla Bullet, aged 30. Their brother, Percy Bellett, owner of the factory, made two unsuccessful attempts to save them. The sisters were machinists and worked at an end of the two-storey, galvanised iron factory. Bellet was returning from a bank when be saw flames and smoke shooting from the upper storey. “L ran inside, shouted to Arthur Knights, a woodworker who was at his bench downstairs, and then raced upstairs,” Bellet said later. “I was met by a wall of flame and was beaten back. I did know if my sisters were in the building or not. If 1 had known for sure, 1 would have risked everything to reach them. Still with this terrible uncertainty on my mind, 1 rushed- outside again, but could not see them. I made a frantic search for axes, t found some, and then, with three Or four other men, I ran to the back of tlie factory. We climbed on some iioxos and smashed a hole in some boards. Through the opening we could sfee the whole floor was a mass of flames. It was impossible to get in. It was not until the firemen gob inside and found my sisters that I knew for sure that they had been trapped.” The fire spread so quickly that by the time the firemen arrived the buildj jug was an inferno. No one- could tell I them for certain that the women were ! inside, but one fireman smashed his : way through and found the bodies. ! One was lying gcross the entrance to | a washroom, and the other near by, ; under a bench. The fire started near the middle of i the top floor. Flock, fibre, and kapok i quickly burst 'into flames, cutting oft j the women from the stairway. There | was no other exit. Police think that | one of the women might have darted i back to warn her sister in the wash- ! room, or that they both tried to reprieve their belongings before attempting to escape. One was found holding ’ a: coat- hanger, as if she had snatched a coat from it as she was overcome by smoke. It is believed that the women i were suffocated before the flames reached them.