RESCUED FROM FIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18547, 3 November 1923, Page 14 (Supplement)

RESCUED FROM FIRE.

PANIC-STRICKEN WOMEN. I NEW YORK HOTEL BURNED. Trapped by a fire a score of women and children* were saved at the risk of their rescuers' lives, from a hotel in New York last month. ' Panic-stricken, struggling youngsters and their mothers, in a Mate of collapse, were carried in their night clothes from the top storey down ladders by firemen and volunteers amid flying embers and swirling smoke fumes. No one was injured, though a number of the rescued and rescuers were overcome by smoke. "The interior o>" the hotel v. as destroyed. The fire was discovered in the third storey about dawn. When the brigade arrived, the entire upper part of the j hotel was ablaze. Heads of terrified wo- j men and children appeared in the flaming windows. - . . j •• Children first!'' was the order of the] chief as the ladders were run up. The firemen found the hallways filled with shrieking mothers trying to .find their children. It was necessary to smash in doors and use force in several instances to drag the women and children to safety. Tug flames lit un the countryside for t miles, "'bringing thousands to the scene. The hotel guests, who lost all of their belongings, were cared for by neighbours, who provided them with clothes.