BALCONY CRASHES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22393, 14 April 1936, Page 11

BALCONY CRASHES

CKOWD FALLS TO ROAD 50 PEOPLE SUFFER INJURY SCENE OF UTMOST CONFUSION MEDICAL SERVICES TAXED About 50 people, men, women and children, were injured, many of them seriously, when an hotel balcony collapsed at Dubbo, New South Wales, last week. During an auction sale, the balcony, an old wooden structure, gave way with a resounding crash, and those on it fell 18ft. on to a concrete footpath. ' When they struggled clear, or were rescued from the mass of splintered woodwork which surrounded them, it was found that no one had been killed, but that nearly all had received injuries of some kind. A woman, in falling, grasped her small child with one hand, and a verandah railing with the other, and hung suspended in . mid air for nearly two minutes, before men came to her assistance.

Assistance lor Doctors Railway employees who had received training as ambulance workers assisted five local doctors in the treatment of the injured, and a lorry, equipped with mattresses and blankets, served as an ambulance in the transport of wounded to hospital. Four patients were taken to private hospitals, 28 to the Dubbo District Hospital, and nearly 20- were treated by ambulance officers and taken to their homes. Five doctors attended at the District Hospital. It was more than six hours before the last patient left the operating theatre. The matron and her staff worked for two hours preparing improvised beds. The accident occurred without warning. The licence of the Macquarie View Hotel was recently transferred from Mr. R. Doherty to Mrs. E. Gray. Mr. Doherty had arranged a sale of furniture, linen, and other hotel equipment, and an auction was being held on a wide verandah of the hotel, overlooking Talbragar Street. The verandah was crowded with people, many of whom were women with their children. Bidding was keen, and the sale of linen had just commenced, when there was a rending of timbers, and the whole of one section of the balcony gave way, and crashed to the ground. Wreckage on Roadway The auctioneer and a few women were left standing in .a doorway, but almost everyone else on the verandah fell with it, men, women and children, iron bedsteads, and the wreckage of the verandah being heaped on the roadway, in- indescribable confusion. Most of those who had fallen staggered to their feet, dazed and bleeding, but not seriously hurt. Others lay as they had fallen. Men helped women to their feet, anil several climbed up a verandah post to help a woman, who was hanging suspended by one hand from a verandah rail, and supporting her small daughter with the other hand. The woman and the girl were brought down unhurt. Returned soldiers said afterwards that the scene outside the hotel, as doctors and ambulance workers hastily treated the injured, was like that in a shelled town during the war. So many were injured "and. in need of prompt attention that doctors in the town, who had been hastily summoned, authorised a number of railway officials, who are trained ambulance officers, to attend to those less seriously hurt. Motor-Lorry as Ambulance

When the accident occurred the three ambulance waggons' in the town were all answering other calls, but were soon summoned. A motor-lorry was already standing in the vicinity stacked with mattresses, which had been bought at the sale. Doctors requisitioned it and it served as an extra ambulance. All X-ray equipment in the town, including that owned privately by doctors, was taken to the district hospital, and photographs were then taken of persons who appeared to be suffering from undiagnosed injuries. Crowds of local residents attended the hospitals, fearing that relatives had been injured in the accident, but the doctors and nurses were so busy that it was many hours before a complete list of the injured could be compiled. Owing to the fact that the afternoon was a half-holiday, the street where the accident occurred, which is usually a busy thoroughfare, was almost deserted. Two police officers, Sergeants Conrick and Madelin, passed under the verandah scarcely a minute before it collapsed.

A cablegram from Sydney published yesterday stated that one of the people injured when the balcony collapsed, Mrs. Florence Meeth, aged 56, has died, following a broken thigh and severe shock. Two others, a man and an elderly woman, whose skulls were fractured, are in a critical condition.