FIRE AT CONSTANTINOPLE

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 45, 18 September 1918, Page 7

FIRE AT CONSTANTINOPLE

ENORMOUS DESTRUCTION. The great fire at Constantinople on May 31 was more terrible than any I in human ■ memory. One must go back over 80 years to find such a fire ! as raged for over 27 hours. The fire covered a distance of over 2\ miles, ! right across old Stambul from north- j east to south-west, burning away a strip of from one-third to. five-eights I of a mile broad, while half-way on its { course it also branched out in a south erly direction. Ten districts of the city were seriously ravaged; over j 5000 houses, 20 baths, a dozen bazaars, and some it) mosques were tie-1 stroyed, and over 200,0(f0 persons ' were left homeless. This part of Stambul is almost in the centre of ; the city ; it is a congested quarter. ' inhabited by poor Mahommedaiis, who live crowded together. Desperate i confusion prevailed, until Enver Pasha, with a part of the garrison and the German and Austro-Hungar-ian troops in the capital, arrived on the spot, and the chief of the Turkish General Staff, the German General von Scliee, undertook with Enver the direction of the operations and the rescue work. The fire had already' reached the neighbourhood of Atik, whence it descended in two directions towards the south-west to the suburb of Psamatia, inhabited by Greeks. No one could tell where the fire would go next with the changing wind. Some Government offices and several konnks. of highly placed author ities, including those of flu- Grand Vizier, the Minister of Finance, ami'

the Sultan's Grand Master of Ceremonies, had*to be evacuated in all haste, as well as the principal hospitals and schools situated close by. From the other side of the Golden Horn, from the heights of Pera, the

' fire was seen in the dark night. It blazed up now hero, now there, and then, driven forward by a violent . wind, it shot up, so that a whole street was in flames in a twinkling. The fire was finally extinguished in the morning of June 2.