FIRE SWEEPS FACTORY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 9 January 1940, Page 7

FIRE SWEEPS FACTORY

DAMAGE ESTIMATED AT £IOOO FLAMES’ RAPID SPREAD [United Press Association]AUCKLAND, Bth January. 1 Sweeping the factory within a few j minutes, fire destroyed the plant and j contents of an upholstery workshop in i a brick building, owned and occupied j by Andrews and Clark, furniture manu- I facturers, this afternoon. As the flames spready rapidly six young women and four men working in the factory escaped by means of a door leading into the adjoining cabinet-making department. Damage to the plant and stock was estimated at about £IOOO. The fire began in a corner of the factory when an electric motor which had been cleaned during the morning was switched on to operate a flock machine. Apparently, a short circuit ignited lengths of rubber hairlock which were stacked alongside. Before any steps could be taken to extinguish the flames, highly inflammable materials were well ablaze. While one man dashed into the adjoining cabinet-making department to telephone the fire brigade, other employees grabbed any personal belongings that happened to be near at hand and ran for the exit. Within seconds, so it seemed to members of the staff, the factory was filled with smoke and flame. In one large

room of the workshop, separated from the remainder of the building by a poilite partition ,six young women were operating sewing machines. Most of them were obliged to flee without taking even the clothes which they had replaced by smocks during working hours and the exit was in flames when some passed through into the safety of the cabinet-making department. Similarly, most of the workmen lost their kits of upholstery tools, each of which was valued at about £5. EMPLOYEES LOSE BELONGINGS “We had absolutely no warning,” one of the employees subsequently said. “One minute, work was proceeding i normally, and the next the building i seemed to be a sheet of flame. There | was not time to save anything—library ! books, lunch cases and tools just had to stay where they were and we thought we were lucky if we could j grab our coats before getting away. ! Most of the girls had no time to change from their slippers to their shoes, a few of which we subsequently found.”