TRAPPED BY FLAMES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17062, 21 September 1929, Page 5

TRAPPED BY FLAMES

MOTHER SAVES CHILDREN HOUSE BADLY GUTTED (Special to the Herald.) AUCKLAND, this day. Tongues of flame leaping round her as she struggled. Mrs. A. l’ayne snatched her two-month-old Ira by from its cradle, and seizing her two-year-old child from its cot, she made a desperate rescue of her children when she. found lier house at Hill street, Newmarket, in (lames yesterday. Through dense smoko Mrs. Payne staggered to the front door, only to find that it was warped by the heat and would not open. Down the "hail she traced her way to the living room at the hack. With a tight grip on her children she fought her way to the window, threw it open, and dropped the children gently on the ground outside, and then struggled after them. When the fire broke out some tinfe after midnight, Mrs. Payne was awakened by the crackling of leaping flames. Fortunately, the children were in the front room with their parents, and while Mr. Payne rushed for help, and the Newmarket fire bell tolled, 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 Newmarket fire brigade arrived flames were leaping from the windows, and the whole street was aglow with the reflection. Little was saved- from the fire. Inside, the five-roomecl house was gutted practically from end to end. two rooms escaping with only minor damage. On the wall of one of the front rooms hung a crucifix, and although tongues of flame swept all round it the little symbol was unharmed.