TRAPPED IN FIRE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 25, Issue 3759, 22 May 1936, Page 5

TRAPPED IN FIRE

FOUR PEOPLE PERISH.

While horrified crowds stood helplessly in a narrow street, powerless to avert the tragedy taking place before their eyes, four people perished when fire broke out early on a recent morning in a block of flats over a milliner’s shop in Soho, London. The victims were two women, a man, and a six-year-old girl. A third woman was taken to Middlesex Hospital gravely injured through leaping from the second floor window of the blazing building. The alarm was given by a passerby about 2 a.m., but although hundreds of firemen and 20 engines were at once rushed to the scene, the fire, in the words of an eye-witness, “simply swept up the building and devoured the interior.” How the blaze was discovered is best told in the words of Mr. Maurice Weintrop, whp summoned the fire brigade. “I was coming down Peter Street,” he related, “when I saw one of the girls who live in the building opening the door. A second later she came rushing out screaming ‘Fire!’ When I got back, after smashing an alarm, the place was an inferno of flames.” During the few minutes before the fire brigade arrived two men employed in a nearby garage, Mr. A. M. Simpson and Mr. W. Pattison, made heroic attempts to rescue the hapless people trapped in the blazing building. They were just going to “clock in” when they heard screams. Rushing out, they saw the whole street lit up by flames, and the figure of a young woman outlined in one of the second floor windows.

“We broke open the door,” they said, “and tried to force our way up the stairs to her, but the flames were unbearable. Both of us were badly scorched, and were forced to return to the street. There, helped by two other men, we spread out ouir overcoats and shouted to the women to jump. .

“She did not, however, and a few moments later we were horrified to see her fall back into the room amid the flames. Apparently part of the floor had given way.

“Before we arrived, one of the residents (Mrs. Chong) had jumped from the window to the pavement. She apparently leaped clean through the window, for glass lay all around her, and she was badly cut.” By the time the fire brigade arrived neighbours were hurrying into the street, and some young men tore do>wn windows in the hope that those trapped inside would jump. The fire brigade quickly ran escapes to the upper windows, but nothing could be done to rescue the victims.

So fierce were the flames that the tops of the escapes were scorched. Several of the firemen made desperate efforts to force their way upstairs through the flames, but the heat and smoke drove them back. Three of the fire-fighters were severely burned.