A NEW YORK FIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12834, 6 April 1905, Page 6

A NEW YORK FIRE.

SOME HEROIC RESCUES.

NINETEEN LIVES LOST.

New York, March 14. Nineteen* persons were burned to death in a fire which destroyed the five-story tenement house at 105, Allen-street early today. More than 40 were injured, and only a few of the sleeping inmates escaped unhurt. Several of those who perished were roasted to death in plain, view of thousands in the street.

Coroner Goldenkratz declared, after an investigation, that he had reason to believe the blaze was the work of an incendiary. He issued subpoenas for the fire marshal, tenement house and building inspectors and health and police officials to appear before him at the inquest on Thursday. Of the 19 dead, three bodies, those of a boy and two girls, remain unidentified. The following have been identified:—Rachel .Solomon, aged 45; Jacob Solomon, aged 16; Isaac Solomon, aged 18; Jessie Cohen, aged 15; Rose Weiner, aged 23; Sander Werner, aged four; Ida Muskowitz, aged 10; Harry Kaufman, aged 10; Rose Miller, aged four ; Morris Miller, aged five months; Sarah Kline, aged 60; Bella Zeidler, aged 30; Harry Zeidler, aged 11; Rachel Zekller, aged 12; Garshou Euschs, aged 30 ; and Harris Zeidler, aged 40. It is believed that the three unidentified victims were visitors with some of the families who lived there. The bodies were so badly 'burned that they are practically unrecognisable. Tho scenes about the building after the fire, and when tho search for the dead was begun, were heartrending. Nothing so pitiful of such proportions has been seen in New York city since the Slocum disaster, in which 1000 persons, nearly all of them women and children, lost their lives.

The fire started in the basement occupied by Isaac Davis, his wife and three children. Davis returned home early this morning, and entered his store just in time tc see a kerosene lamp in the rear explode. He aroused his wife, and both tried to put out the flaming lamp, but without success, and then gave, all their attention to getting their children out of the burning building. A policeman, who heard the alarm, rushed to the scene, and every effort war made to arouse the sleeping persons in the house. Meantime the Haines spread with startling rapidity, and when the persons who had been asleep on the upper floors awoke they found themselves confronted by a. wall of llanies on every side. The panic-stricken people rushed to the fire escapes, only to find them littered with rubbish of all descriptions, and almost impassable. Down through these cluttered narrow passageways flowed a stream of humanity. On some of the escapes the rubbish was so closely packed that it became impossible to pass certain points, and men. women, and children; stood, literally roasting to death as the flames roared through the windows.

One of the escapes, which ended near Hie roof of a shod about 20ft above the ground, had been manned by Policeman John 1). Dwan, who ran a plank across to die window of an adjoining building. Nearly a dozen persons had been rained across this narrow bridge by the policeman when the flames began to sweep around the lower end of the fire-escape. Running into the fire, the policeman seized a, little child and started on the last return trip across to the place of safety. When half-way across the plank, burned more than half through, broke where it rested on the fire-escape, and rescuer and rescued fell to the stone-paved yard 20ft below. The man struck fairly on his back, and one of his shoulders was shattered by the force of the fall, but the Child was uninjured. The firemen ran up ladders at other points around the building, and dozens of people were taken from the crowded fireescapes and upper windows. By this time the building was a furnace. Lieutenant Bonner, son of a former fire chief, ascended a redhot fire-escape five times. Four times he came down with a woman or child in his arms. The fifth time he was making for (lie street with an unconscious woman, when his strength gave out. He staggered, and would have fallen to death, had not a comrade come to in's assistance. As Bonner reached a fourth-storey window on one of his ascents and dragged a little girl from a window where she stood surrounded by flames, she pleaded with him to let her escape and go in after her little brother, whom she had carried to the window. He hsd fainted and was roasting, she said. Bonner jumped through the window, found the little boy just inside, and carried him out.

Fireman Hannignn repeated Bonner's feat on the third floor, rescuing Miss Farmio G. Insberg. 'file woman, her nightdress blazing, was seen to crawl out of a, window, and start down the fireescape from the top floor. The hot iron blistered her feet and burned deep into her flesh, but she continued on. The scalingladders were run up close to the escape, and a. fireman had almost reached her, when a belch of flame covered her like a wave, and bore her down. She fell back, and died in sight of the horror-stricken crowd. , A baby was flung into the arms of. a policeman below by its fear-crazed mother. Just as the policeman caught the child, its mother dived to the ground. Her body struck the policeman on the head and he fell unconscious. The woman escaped injury, but she had been badly burned. The baby was unhurt.

At the rear of the building two men and two women were seen on the fire-escapes. The woman came first, but her escape was blocked by boxes of rubbish too heavy for her to lift. The men went to her assistance, and hurled the obstruction into the yard. As tho four were descending slowly between, the third and fourth floors', flames hurst from the windows all about them. They fell, and were roasted to death. Their bodies were brought down by the firemen.

Through the smoke another figure was seen on tlie fire-escape on the fifth floor. The victim sank to the escape and died. After the lire was under control the street, was filled with half-dressed, weeping people, seeking for their relatives-, imploring the policemen to go into the burning building and rescue the hived ones whom they believed to be. perishing there. One man, whose family was saved, bewailed the loss of some" jewellery left in his apartment, and begged a fireman to save it- for him.