FIRE AT APARTMENT HOUSE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 10 June 1939, Page 10

FIRE AT APARTMENT HOUSE

‘ FIVE PEOPLE SUFFER INJURIES 1 SPECTACULAR BLAZE IN WELLINGTON WELLINGTON. This Day. j ! Four people were removed to hospital by the Free Ambulance and a j filth was treated on the spot for in- I juries received in a spectacular blaze ! 1 which badly damaged a big two-storey 1 wooden house in Thompson street early ! this morning. The premises, which were conducted as an apartment house, , were well alight when the fire was discovered and by the time everybody had been roused, the escape of a number on 1 the top floor had been rendered diffi- ! cult owing to the stairway being cut 1 off. Some consequently risked jumping fifteen feet to a concrete path below, j ; Those taken to hospital are: Arthur Rudings (storeman), severe | burns on the right arm and face. A. Cottermole, lacerated wounds to, the right hand. Mrs Cottermole. wife of A. Cotter- ■ mole, a severe lacerated wound on the 1 left arm. W. L. Martin (P. and T. cadet), a j punctured wound in the right arm. None of the wounds are serious. A. Odea, a commercial artist, was treated on the spot for a wound to his left foot. The fire was first noticed by Harry Serisen who was sleeping in one of the upstairs rooms. He said he went to sleep at about half-past one. The next thing he knew was that it was , very hot and smoke was coming into the room. "I opened the door of an . adjoining room and saw that half of it was on fire. I switched on the light, dashed out into the hall and awakened as many people as I could. A little , later I found myself outside the house,” he said. Rudings. who occupied the same | room as Sersien, also wakened as many as possible, but by the time he went to go downstairs he found that the passageway was barred by flames. After being scorched he turned back and leapt through one of the windows, struck a bank, and fell further on to some steps. Although he was badly shaken and burnt he scrambled to his 1 feet and called Odea and Johnson in the room on the ground floor. Keith Robie, who occupied a room on ‘ the top floor near the back of the ' house, also found h® was unable to escape by the stairs. He scrambled ’ through a small window outside, caught a drainpipe and from there went head ■ over heels to the ground. : The fire had a good hold before its ' discovery at 2.15 a.m., and when the brigade received the call it was visible at the Central Fire Station nearly a mile away. Three engines were despatched with additions from Brooklyn and Stonstable street. The flames were suppressed but not before the top floor . had been gutted. The rooms below ; suffered from water. The owner is E. J. Hill, and the occupant is Miss Lucy Dawson, running the apartments. There are no particulars of insurances.