TRAPPED BY FIRE

Taranaki Daily News, 1 September 1933, Page 8

TRAPPED BY FIRE

CHILDREN IN NURSERY. FATHER’S SUCCESSFUL DASH. With flames eating into the stairway down which he raced, Mr. K. C. Matthews saved his small son and daughter, from an upstairs nursery, when fire destroyed his home on the highest hill in the Mount Eliza district, near Frankston, near Melbourne, recently. . Twice Mr. Matthews dashed into the burning house, which was a large one of 11 rooms. He had to fight his way through thick smoke, which billowed down the stairway. In the upstairs nursery, which the fire had not then entered, he lifted his small daughter, aged eight years, from her bed and scrambled through the smoke with her. The fire was roaring through the wooden building and flames were licking the stairs. They lit up the hallway and enabled Mr. Matthews to reach the open air with his daughter. The fire was sweeping toward the front of the house when Mr. Matthews got the child out. Without waiting, he dashed back into the swirling smoke and struggled up the stairs again to save his small son, aged 12 years. By this time the flames had eaten through the walls into other rooms and the staircase was burning fiercely. Half choked with smoke, Mr. Matthews reached the nursery again. Pieces of the ceiling were dropping round him and flames were racing across the floors of the upper rooms. He grabbed his small son who had been awakened by the crackling of the fire and the smoke that now filled the nursery. Again Rfr. Matthews had to face the descent over the burning stairway. Fire had burst through the walls into the hallway and burning brands from the upper floor fell about him. Less than a minute after Mr. Matthews had carried his children to safety, flames enveloped the nursery from which they had been rescued, and part of the tiled roof collapsed with a crash into the roaring furnace below. . t Members of the Frankston Fire Brigade who responded promtply were hampered by lack of water. The nearest hydrant is more than 350 yards away from the house. It was not possible, to get sufficient water on to the burning house to save even part of it. With a quantity of furniture, it was reduced to a heap of charred timber. Less than six months ago Mr. Matthews, who is in business in Flinders Lane, had the house built on the most prominent hill in the district. With its furniture and fittings it is estimated to have been, worth £3500.