LONDON FIRE DRAMA

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1005, 23 June 1930, Page 9

LONDON FIRE DRAMA

SON HURT IN RESCUING PARENTS Three people •were severely Injured in a fire at a house in Alexander Street, Old Kent Road, London, recently. They were:—Emily Wood, aged 66; Thomas Wood, aged 67; and Albert Wood, aged 27. The mother and father both received extensive burns on head, face, arms and body. Albert Wood had severe burns on the legs and feet. Another son, Stanley Wood, aged 16, climbed out of a back bedroom window in his night attire and Mrs. j Edith Pett, a married daughter, cs- j caped through the kitchen window’. Stanley gave a graphic description I of the fire. “I was sleeping in a back bedroom,” j he said. ‘‘l was awakened by shout- ! ing. I rushed out and found the staircase on fire. The front door was a mass of flames. I tried to get out I through the front room window, but - was driven back by flames shooting almost up to the ceiling. ‘‘The back room was also alight, so j I rushed up the stairs and managed to get through my window and roll down a roof to safety.” The Hero's Part Albert, the son who is in hospital, was the hero of the fire. He was discharged from the Air Force a few days previously after six years’ service. He was sleeping in the front room, and could easily have escaped, but he rushed through the flames to the dining room, where his mother and father were trapped. He managed to get them into the back yard through the window. "He was ever so brave,” said a member of the family. "When he was being taken to the hospital he did not seem to mind about hi 3 injuries, but kept asking how mother and father were.” Mrs. Pett described how she saved her four-year-old daughter, Iris. "My baby and I were in the kitchen w-ith my mother and father,” she said. “Suddenly the flames, spread all up the wall. “In a few seconds the room was alight, and the fire quickly spread to the staircase and the front door. “I tried to get the window up, because escape through the door was out of the question. The window was jammed, so I pulled down the upper half and dropped my baby into the yard.”