SERIOUS BUSH FIRES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2288, 6 January 1898, Page 17

SERIOUS BUSH FIRES.

FIVE LIVES LOST.

Hobabt, December 31.

The heat has been intense the last few days. There have been extensive bush fires in many parts of the island. The Zeehan township and mines are suffering from fire. Large parties are fighting the flames day and night, and several have besn severely burned. Offer 30 homesteads, with their contents, in the vicinity of ZBehan, Ringvillß, and Dundas have been burned.

January 1.

The bush fires are assuming serious dimensions. The country i 3 ablaza in all directions, Mount Wellington beicg a mas 3of flsme. Several buildings on the slopes have been destroyed, and also the famous Fern Tree Gully. A party of sailors from the warships are assisting to fight the flames. Hobarb itself is hidden in smoke.

At Carnarvon the penitentiary, police station, a boarding house, and three cottages were burned.

A terrible fire swept over the Lyell mining fields early yesterday morning, and made a clean sweep of all the dwelling i on Mount Lyell, the Tharsis and South Tharsis properties, and Linda Valley. All the residents had to fbe for their lives, and were only partially clad. They sought refuge in creeks and tunnels, and saved nothing whatever. The house of Mr Clarke, engineer to the Lyell Company, was burned down, his wife and family just escaping with their lives.

The hotels are crowded with the homeless. Several persons are badly burned, but so far aB is known there has been no farther loss of life.

January 3

The devastation by bush fireß on the Huon road, the Upper and Lower Longley, and the Bandfly is deplorable. Dwellings, churches, the post office, farms, and homesteads have been reduced to aßhes.

Mrs Jones, wife of a groom at the Longley Hotel, was burned to death, and her son also perished. Every soul in the locality would have perished had it not been for the shelter of 9, bridge, whore the people huddled

together partly in the water and remained there for hours.

A fruit -picker named Bates was found dead near a rivulet which he had tried to reach. Two men were burned to death at Kettering, and others are missing.

The people in the buined-out districts are flocking into the city, many of them penniless and homeless.

The roads in many places are blocked, and telegraphic communication is cut off.

O^e result of the fire is the almost entire destruction of the raspberry and other small fruit crops. The heat wave, added to the fires, destroyed all the fruits, even in the localities untouched by the actual flames.