NARROW ESCAPE OF FIREMEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20317, 27 January 1928, Page 10

NARROW ESCAPE OF FIREMEN

CONFLAGRATION IN SYDNEY. A RACE FOR LIFE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, January 20. After a comparatively long spell, a big fire broke out in Sydney on Sunday afternoon, and it was one of the most sensa tional and spectacular seen in the city tor years past. It completely destroyed Wynyard Building, of eight storeys, in Carrington street, not far from the General Post Office, and just round the corner from the New South Wales and Commercial Banks. The damage is estimated at about £IOO,OOO. . . A stiff southerly was blowing at the time, and in a very short time the building was a roaring inferno, and cinders were being showered over city buildings in the vicinity as if from a volcano. During the height of the fire an enormous mass of masonry, comprising the whole of tue front of the top floor, came crashing down with a terrific roar, and the firemen working below bad barely time to escape to safety. . Then eight firemen appeared at a window, with flames leaping all round them. They bad been trapped, the flames spreading at a tremendous speed. A ladder was immediately set up, and the eight men just had time to escape through the window before the big crash of masonry occurred. They and 20 other firemen standing in front of the building and working the hoses missed death by a few seconds Tragedy was also narrowly averted m another direction. In residential apartments adjoining the police found three men and a woman dozing in their rooms, quite oblivious of the outbreak, and as they reached the street level portion of tho side wall of Wynyard Building fell and wrecked the rooms they had just vacated. . Meanwhile portion of the wall facing Wynyard lane bulged outward; then it fell crashing upon the rear of the Hotel Victoria, smashing part of the roof and tearing gaping holes in the walls. A second fire was thus started, but the filemen working from roofs in George street, were able to get it under control quickly. Minor outbreaks «courred in other build ings close by, but they were soon quelled. Australia House, a large building, the lower floors of which ar 0 occupied by the Australian Drug Company, was saved by automatic sprinklers, 100 of which are m stalled in the building. A good deal ot damage, however, was done by flooding. The’fire has once again drawn attention to the danger Sydney faces in certain of its busiest centres. If, for instance, an outbreak should occur in one of the build ings in the block bounded by George, Pitt, King, and Market streets, where some of thi biggest retail houses arc situated, who can say what might result Most of them are fitted with automatic sprinklers, but not all, am) the question of compulsion in this connection is bound to crop up again. One thing is certain, and that is that the fire chiefs live in constant dread of a conflagration in this and certain other parts of the city.