DISASTROUS FIRE AT CONSTANTINOPLE

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1408, 3 June 1865, Page 3

DISASTROUS FIRE AT CONSTANTINOPLE

UPWARDS OF ONE lIUNDHED LIVES LOST. (From, the Levant Herald, Feb. 22.) By far the most terrible calamity which lias shocked the public mind of Constantinople for thirty years past happened at Galata, on Monday night. Shortly after eleven o'clock on the night in question a Are broke out in one of the wings of the .Roman Catholic convent of St. Benoit, and, notwithstanding the utter absence of wind, the flames rapidly spread to the adjoining apartments, arid thence to the thickly clustering houses outside the convent enclosure. Shortly after midnight a body of some sixty toloumbajees, with four engines, had stationed themselves along the outside wall of the high stone building in the corner of the the convent quadrangfe, considering themselves sheltered by the wall from the flames within, and being well placed from that point for playing on the wooden buildings already ignited on the other side. The apparent safety of the spot had also collected on and around it several of the policemen and spectators, of whom, as is usual, a large crowd had by this time gathered from all parts of Pera and Galata. Suddenly, and without even a warning crack, the eastern and southern walls of this lofty building toppled outwards, literally cresting over the doomed crowd below like the curve of a breaking wave, and burying under their debris all four of the engines mentioned, with the whole of their crews, and a large number of the police and on-looking crowd. Not a man who had stood within the fatal shadow of the fallen walls escaped. Almost simultaneously, a portion of the western wall fell over on a small, densely-inhabited house, outside the convent limitsj and, crushing through its roof, killed, it is said, eight of its inmates, who were encaged in endeavouring to rescue their effects. For a time this terrible disaster paralyzed all efforts to check the conflagration outside the convent; and as the remaining wall threatened momentarily to give way too, no attempt was made to reach the mangled and dying, whom the ruins of the other walls had only part hid from sight. Of these many were seen to make agonising but ineffectual efforts to extricate themselves from the charred masses of brick and wood which only half-er.tombed them, and then gradually to cease the vain struggle, as suffocation or other cause of death did its work. This part of the scene was harrowing beyond any power of description. The vigorous play of the ships' engines from the inside of the convent quadrangle, aided by the calmness of the night, had in the meantime checked the spread of flames to the western wing of the building, not, however, before the small circular dome and roof of the chapel on the one side, and the dormitories of the female pupils and storerooms on the other, had been seriously damaged. Outside the fire was virtually unopposed, the disasters to their fellows under the convent wall having apparently unnerved the other toloumbajees on the ground. There was, besides, an almost complete want of water. It was not, therefore, till the flames had burned themselves out on all sides to the gaps made in their path by the pulling down of distant houses, that the conflagration may be said to have been got under. This was about seven a.m., by which time, besides the damage done to the convent, in all forty-two houses and four shops had been destroyed. But for the providential absence of wind, however, this would have been but a trifling instalment of the widespread devastation that must have occurred, for had the flames spread down on the one side towards Tophaneli, or on the other crossed the old dyke higher up, the conflagration must have spread in the one direction to far beyond the Yenitcharsi, and in the other from the Teke to the Russian Palace.

The total number of victims to this great calamity is believed to exceed a hundred. Up till yesterday at four p.m., forty-two had been dag out of the debris, when the work was discontinued, in consequence of the bricks and broken roof timber nearer the base of the fallen walls being too hot to permit of further exhumations. Amongst the killed is Ibrahim Bey, the chief of the Galata police. Local charity, we are glad to be able to report, has already bestirred itself actively on behalf of the surviving sufferers ; and a special appeal will be made to the members of our own community in the Embassy Chapel, after morning service, on Sunday next.