ANOTHER BIG BLAZE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21575, 10 February 1940, Page 8

ANOTHER BIG BLAZE

Joinery Works Gutted

Early Morning Fire

Busy Time For Firemen By Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, Feb. 9. Beginning from an unknown cause, fire rapidly gained a hold in the joinery works of I). Scott and Sons, in .Montreal Street south, early this morning, and had a complete hold on the dry timber and benches of the workshops before the alarm was raised, the factory being completely gutted.

When the brigade arrived the building was a mass of flames inside, and there was no hope of effecting a save. The brigade ran four leads of hose in from Montreal Street, Moorhouse Avenue, and Durham Street, concentrating on preventing the spread of the fire to large stacks of timber nearby, and in this they were successful.

Despite the good hold the fire had gained, it was subdued in half an hour, although it was impossible to save any portion of the joinery works. The machine shop was completely destroyed, and this morning was nothing more than a pile of twisted corrugated iron and burned beams, with damaged machinery standing forlornly in the centre. A workshop at one end of the building, and the office at the other, escaped complete destruction, however, although charred and ruined inside. The brigade received the alarm at 1.45 a.m., sending three engines. The factory is situated well back from the street, behind a row of houses, but the firemen were able to bring four leads of hose into action quickly. Although the building was a smouldering, sodden mass of wreckage within half an hour, firemen were on duty until five o’clock.

The building, stock and plant were insured with the Victoria Insurance Company for £1460, but no estimate of the damage has yet been reached. OVERCOME BY SMOKE CRIPPLE RESCUED BY FIREMEN By Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, February 9. A mother and her crippled, eighteeny r-old son, overcome by smoke, were rescued from a burning building in Lower High Street at four o’clock this morning. They were Mrs H. Dick and James Dick, among the occupants of living quarters attached to the Cafe Cecil, and above Knight’s butchery at 172, High Street. Fire broke out in a store-room at the back of the premises at 3.50 am.. and quickly spread to rooms occupied by two members of the cafe staff. Mr George Gibbons, who also sleeps at the rear of the building, gave the alarm and aroused the six other occupants. Firemen who were returning from Scott’s fire in Montreal Street saw the blaze, made a detour and carried on with their second fire of the night. They made a quick save, and confined the blaze to three rooms at the rear. James Dick, whose room was in the front portion of the building, was carried out by firemen. His mother, who had returned to her room to get her money, also had to be assisted out of the building. Both were suffering badly from the thick smoke. SUCCESSION OF OUTBREAKS INCENDIARISM NOT INDICATED By Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, February 9. “Four outbreaks of fire in the City last night and a number of other large fires recently do not in themselves give any cause to believe that incendiarists are active in the city,” said ChiefDetective Dunlop this morning. “Fires 1 ave occurred in cycles before, and this might be just an unfortunate succession of outbreaks. As yet the police have no reason to believe otherwise. Nevertheless, in wartime especially, the theory that some disgruntled people are making trouble in this way cannot be discounted, and we are making thorough investigations. So far the buildings have all been so well alight when an alarm was raised that little could be saved, and any trace of petrol, combustibles or explosives, if any had been there, would have been destroy? Th "re has been nothing to cause suspicion yet, however.”