Heavy Damage in Sydney Fire

Northern Advocate, 16 June 1947, Page 5

Heavy Damage in Sydney Fire

(Rec. 12.30 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. Telephone equipment worth more than £IOO,OOO was seriously damaged and probably destroyed in a spectacular city fire last night.

The fire; which burned out the transmission laboratory in Underwood Street, between George and Pitt Streets, near Circular Quay, cut off all trunk line services to areas north of Sydney.

Twenty thousand people jammed the streets in the area as the flames ••oared through four of the five floors and then gutted most of the adjoining Morgan Chambers Building, which is a sixstoreyed structure in George Street. Inspection this morning reveals that much telephone equipment was saved, but that the total damage in the fire was probably £150,001). FIREMEN RISK LIVES “The damage could not have been worse,” said an official of the Post-master-General's Department. Firemen risked their lives many times to bring the blaze under controlTottering walls, falling masonry, live wires and explosions, which spread the flames with lightning speed, added to the hazards. After the fire firemen found in the wreckage a full case of gelignite, which had aparently survived a fall as well as the fire, and a 400-gallon tank of petrol. A resident of George Street first noticed a glow in a window of the laboratory building and telephoned the fire brigade. The fire spread with amazing speed through the top two floors and burst out through the roof in a spectacular blaze, which could be seen from nearly every Sydney suburb. , CROWD HAMPERS WORK About 200 policemen struggled to control the crowd, which pressed about the engines and hampered the firemen. Cylinders of gas, used for cutting and joining cables, sent sheets oi flame mushrooming through the roof and out through the windows. The noise was deafening and the blast of explosions was felt hundreds of yards away.

The wind drove the flames across a lane and the fire caught the eighth floor of the Metropolitan Business College. but was soon checked there. The fire brigades worked brilliantly to save the rest of the city block.