A MYSTERIOUS FIRE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3831, 16 August 1927, Page 63

A MYSTERIOUS FIRE.

SENSATIONAL RUMOURS.

THEORY OF INCENDIARISM UNSUPPORTED. AUCKLAND, August 11. Sensational rumours, unsupported by a vestige of anything which could give rise to such extreme hypotheses, were current in the city to-day concerning the incipient fire last evening in a passageway of the Union Buildings, Customs street. The circumstance that the outbreak occurred on the floor on which the American Consulate is housed, and a few hours before the announced time of the execution in the United States of the Italians, Sacco and Venzetti, whose sentence has provoked threats from their sympathisers, was seized on_ as material for what can only be described as a canard. The briefest investigation serves to refute the extravagant theory that events thousands of miles distant have a bearing on what is admittedly an unaccountable but very common type of fire. The small cupboard was the most unpromising place which even a lukewarm sympathiser with the condemned murderers would have selected for an incendiary demonstration. Situated at the end of a passageway, two doors from the Consulate, Messrs Kavanagh and Boylan’s office is between. It stood against a lath and plaster wall, and was not even large enough to fill the. width of the narrow passage. Before the flames could have spread from the cupboard to the Consulate they must have burned through the door at the mouth of the passage and then along the wall some distance outside, or else destroyed the wall of the solicitors’ chambers and then burned through a second partition which separates them from the Consul's office adjacent.

“It is all piffle.” said the fire brigade superintendent, Mi - W. L. Wilson, when the theory of incendiarism was referred to him. He pointed out that the papers in the cupboard was quite undisturbed, and that the doors of it were swung to when the brigade arrived. The absence of any smell of benzine, or the presence of inflammable material discounted the assumption. The flames started at the bottom, which inclined to the idea that a carelessly-flung cigarette butt or match might quite conceivably have originated the outbreak, which did extremely little damage. The veriest amateur incendiarist. it is considered, would not have closed the doors on such a small compartment, standing only about 3ft high, if he desired to make a success of the venture.

The anti-American hypothesis is weakened by the fact that anyone with designs on the Consulate could easily have dropped inflammable material through the letter aperture in its door on the main landing, or alternatively could have broken the glass in the door of the solicitors’ room, undone the lock, and again by the same means gained access to the Consulate.

“I have no opinion on the matter. It is one of those things which, if it had ”'t happened at the psychological moment of the demonstrations against the American Government and Consulates, would have been undeserving of attention,” said the American Consul, Mr Walter F. Boyle, to-day. “I would not expect an attack in New Zealand, but while I admit there is nothing to substantiate the theory of incendiarism I cannot but connect the ideas.”

A statement t-at the key was found turned in the cupboard lock is unfounded.