FIRE AND WIND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XL, Issue 6916, 26 January 1901, Page 3

FIRE AND WIND.

A MOST EXTRAORDINARY FREAK.

! [By Electric Telegraph. — Copyright.] (Per Press Association.) Received January 26, at 8.40 a.m. LiuNCESTON, January 26. Serious bush fires, the result of the hot dry weather, are raging in tho vicinity of Queenston. When the fire was at its height an extraordinary sight ,was witnessed. The fire was beating up hill away from some houses when it encountered a fierce whirlwind, which caught the fire, bent it to a thin column of flame, and. whirled it down the hill towards the houses; As it reached the first hut the wind seemed to blow the fire right out, but the force of the gale was scarcely less disastrous. It unroofed the hut and hurled the building a ■ distance of some yards against a house. A few minutes later the hut was on fire and the house demolished. 'The whirlwind, which lasted three or four minutes, unroofed a number of other buildings in the neighbourhood. At North Lyell the fires were most serious. Rows of boarding houses, and some thirty miners' dwellings were destroyed as well as the dwellings of two mine managers. A certain amount of damage was caused at the Lyell Com" pany's haulage line. The South Tharsis concentrating; mill was only saved with difficulty. The most serious damage was to the new Queen River tram line, which was destroyed for a considerable distance, together with a number of bridges, *tt*~*±.. irrminininii