SERIOUS FIRE AT RIVERTON

Southland Times, Issue 23435, 16 February 1938, Page 4

SERIOUS FIRE AT RIVERTON

Destruction Of Five Shops

OUTBREAK YESTERDAY MORNING

DAMAGE ESTIMATED AT MORE THAN £6OOO

Damage estimated at more than £6OOO was caused by a fire which broke out at Riverton early yesterday morning and demolished five business premises situated in Palmerston street at the north end of the main business area. That the fire, the cause of which is unknown, did not spread further and cause still greater damage was due to a heavy downpour of rain about an hour after the outbreak started. There are no fire-fighting appliances in Riverton and what little water there was available came from household tanks, then almost empty after the recent dry spell. Little could be saved from any of the shops, the heat being so great and the flames so fierce that volunteer fire-fighters had to content themselves with safeguarding adjoining buildings. Those whose shops were destroyed were:

Mrs J. Lang, fruiterer and confectioner.

Vernon James Branks, electrician and radio dealer.

Miss A. E. McNaughton, women’s outfitter.

Miss M. Thomson, owner of Thomson’s Pharmacy.

S. L. McNeil, fancy goods dealer, jeweller and tobacconist. The shops occupied by Misses McNaughton and Thomson and Mr McNeil were all part of a brick building belonging to Mr John Forsyth. Mrs Lang’s shop was part of a two-story wooden structure which she .owned. This building also contained the electrical shop. All that remains of a block of buildings, which occupied a frontage of about 150 feet on the main street and 100 feet on Princess street, are the gaunt brick walls of Mr Forsyth’s building. INSURANCES ON BUILDING The building owned by Mr Forsyth was valued at £l5OO and is insured for £lOOO at the Queensland Insurance office. Miss McNaughton’s stock which was valued at £1544, is insured under two policies, one for £730 and one for £270, with the London, Liverpool and Globe Insurance Company. The stock in Thomson’s Pharmacy was valued at £556 and the furniture and. fittings at £l5O. The stock is insured at the Phoenix Insurance office for £3OO and the furniture and fittings for £lOO. Mr Branks’s stock was valued at £2OO and was insured for £125. The shop was owned by Mrs Lang. The outbreak, which is thought to have started in Mr Branks’s shop, a small wooden building, began about 1.30 a,m. and at 2 o’clock had almost wholly destroyed that building and had a firm hold on Mrs Lang’s premises next door. The flames then swept up the brick walls of Mr Forsyth’s building, licked hungrily at the roof and soon created a raging furnace within the three shops underneath. A crowd of several hundreds quickly gathered. The efforts of a volunteer bucket brigade were limited, both by the scarcity of water and the fierceness of the blaze, to preventing the fire from spreading to the opposite side of the street. Even with that protection the flames, which danced fitfully across the bitumen, managed to scorch the front of McKinnon’s garage and blister the paint on three petrol pumps on the opposite side of the street. CHEMICALS ABLAZE There were pyrotechnics when the fire gained a hold in the pharmacy. Bottles of chemicals exploded in showers of coloured sparks with the rapidity of machine-gun fire and fragments of glass were hurled into the street. The flames by this time had gained greater hold on the bitumen, which burned fiercely and was still warm yesterday afternoon. A telegraph pole on the corner of Palmerston and Princess streets was ignited and burned fiercely near the top, causing the wires to break and cutting off electric power and telephone communication in that section of the town. The pole was replaced yesterday afternoon, a gang of Post and Telegraph employees working hurriedly throughout the day to repair the two systems. The failure of the electric power caused no small inconvenience in Keeler Brothers’ bakery, which was separated from the fire by a vacant section. The bakers had to work by the light of an oil lamp, and as the electric mixing machine could not be used the bread had to be kneaded by hand. Late yesterday afternoon the ruins were still smouldering, and at intervals flames burst out only to flicker and die in the great heaps of ashes. BACON FACTORY ON FIRE DAMAGE ESTIMATED AT £BOOO (United Press Association) CHRISTCHURCH, February 15. A fire caused damage estimated at £BOOO, £5OOO for the building and £3OOO for the plant and stock, in the bacon factory of T. H. Green and Company Ltd., in Princess street, Addington. The fire started about 10.30 ciclock last evening and it burned fiercely until early this morning. The building is outside the city and the greatest handicap to the brigade in its fight was lack of water. A small stream alongside the factory war exhausted after about five minutes’ pumping by the engine and after that the swimming bath at Wright, Stephenson and Company’s store, about a cuarter of a mile away, was drawn on. This held about 15,000 gallons and although there was some artesian water flowing in all the time, this was nearly exhausted by 12.30 o’clock. Conditions were such that the brigade had only one lead in use all the time and with this the firemen concentrated mor; oa saving parts of the factory which the fire had not touched.

The main part of the building was completely gutted, and it was at the northern end of this, apparently near the sausage and small goods department, that the outbreak was first noticed and it spread very rapidly from there to the hanging room. Here tiere were about £2OOO worth of pigs on hooks and once the flames got into this

room the melting fat added more fuel to the fire.

Though details of the insurance were not available this morning it was stated the whole cover on the buildings and stock was £ll,OOO in the New Zealand Insurance Company. The blaze was one of the most spectacular seen in Christchurch for many years. When the fire was at Its height between 11 and 11.30 o’clock large sheets of flame and masses of smoke rose into the air and the crashing of the roofing and beams provided an exciting accompaniment to the spectacle. It was not long before the part of the building affected by the fire was nothing more than a shell of brick walls fringed with flaming woodwork and enclosing a chaos of smoking ruins.