FATAL FIRE

Southland Times, Issue 21273, 19 December 1930, Page 6

FATAL FIRE

ORIENTAL BAY BLAZE BOARDERS’ GRAPHIC ACCOUNT EVIDENCE AT INQUEST (rcr" United Press Association.) Wellington, December 18. Graphic accounts of the fatal tire which occurred at Oriental Bay on December 4, were given by the principal witnesses at an inquest into the deaths of Mrs Ellen George Watson, and Mr Walter Gray before the Coroner (Mr J. S. Barton, S.M.) Henrietta Needham, a millinery buyer, said she resided on the premises owned and occupied by Mrs Watson. She. retired to bed at 10.45 p.m. after entertaining a bridge party in her bed-sitting room. Neither she nor her visitors were smoking during the evening. Witness had a coal and wood fire in her grate. It was practically out when she retired. She went to sleep as soon as she went to bed. The next sheknew was when she woke up half suffocated with the smoke. She immediately ran upstairs to Gray and woke him. She called out to Mrs Watson and had some difficulty in waking Gray, but when she left his room he was awake. .She did not try Mrs Watson’s door for it was always ajar, but she thought that calling out “fire” would wake her. Then she ran downstairs and got a dish of water. She could not remember what happened then, but the whole place seemed to burst into flames. As far as she could remember there was no fire upstairs when she arrived there first. As the fire broke out in earnest she‘shouted to all in the house to warn" them of the fire. Then she thought she heard Mrs Watson walk along Hie top passage and thought she was making for the back stairs. Everything was then enveloped in dense smoke. Witness had to make her way to the backyard and there discovered Miss Thompson but there was no sign of Mrs Watson. They both tried to go up the back stairs but the smoke prevented them. They then saw Gray in the act of jumping and called out to him not to do so. He was at the bathroom window. However, he jumped out and they ran forward to intercept him to break his fall but he hit a coal-box and then the concrete. Just after Gray jumped, Mrs Watson appeared at the bathroom window in her night attire and stood at the window gasping, apparently for help. They tried to reach her with a ladder but it would not reach the window. She then disappeared. The brigade arrived on the scene just prior to this. Witness was of the opinion that the fire started in her wardrobe which was near the fireplace. Elsie Mary Thompson gave similar evidence.

Thomas Burton Clark, Deputy-SupeHn-tendent of the Fire Brigade said the building was well alight when the brigade arrived. He was told there was a woman in the front room on the first floor but when he made a search as soon as possible, he could find no trace of her. As the fire was being subdued he made a further search and found the body of Mrs Watson beneath the window. The Coroner returned a verdict that the death of Ellen George Watson took place as the result of asphyxiation and scalding and that Walter Gray died in the Hospital from chest injuries received while jumping from the top storey of the house. “Witnesses have rescribed how the woman, after leaning half out of the window of the burning building, fell back when the ladder, which had been run up, proved too short, and how the man, disregarding the shouts of people below, jumped,” the Coroner commented. “No reason why they could not have left the house by the staircase, as others had done, has been shown.”