A NARROW ESCAPE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20828, 21 September 1929, Page 14

A NARROW ESCAPE.

TRAPPED IN BURNING BUILDING. MOTHER’S PRESENCE OF MIND. (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, September 20. Tongues of flame leaping round her as ehs struggled,'Mrs A. Payne snatched her two-months-old baby from its cradle and seizing a two-year-old child from its cot she made a desperate rescue of her children when she found her hohso at Hill street, Newmarket, in flames" early this morning. Through dense smoke Mrs Payne staggered to the front door, only to find that it was warped by the heat and would not open. Down the hall she made her way to the living room at the back with a tight grip on her children., She fought her way to a window, threw it open, dropped. the children gently on 'the ground outside, and then struggled after them. The mother and children were safe. When the fire broke out some time after midnight Mrs Payne was awakened by crackling of leaping flames. Fortunately the children were in a front room with their parents, and while Mr Payne rushed for help Mrs Payne rushed for her children. Perhaps if they had been in a room at the back where they usually slept they would have been burned, to death. Within a few minutes the place was like an inferno inside, and when the fire brigade arrived the flames were leaping : from 'the windows and the whole street was aglow with the reflection. Little was saved from the fire.

The Paynes had been in the house only a week. The house was gutted from end to end. On the wall of one of the front' rooms hung a,crucifix, and although the tongues of flame swept all round it the little symbol was unharmed.