HOTEL FIRE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21576, 12 February 1940, Page 4

HOTEL FIRE

Young Waitress Loses

Her Life

Flames Spread With Terrific Speed By Telegraph—Press Association WELLINGTON, February 10 A fire fatality accurred early this morning when Kathleen Olive Matthews, aged 17, employed as a waitress, failed to escape from Hotel Lloyds, Lower Cuba Street. Formerly known as the Columbia Hotel, it is of six storeys and one of the oldest of the larger hotel buildings in Wellington. The brigade received the alarm at 4.5 a.m. and arrived within two minutes, but already the fire had broken through the roof, and Superintendent Woolley sent out a brigade call, not so much on account of the fire risk as the risk to human life. There were 30 or more boarders in the place, few of whom had left the building when the brigade arrived. The fire was extraordinary in the terrific speed with which it passed from the ground floor to the sixth floor, roaring up a disused dumbwaiter, the surrounds of which were of plaster board, a consequence being that it ignited on every floor and mushroomed out in a terrific blaze on the sixth floor, where Miss Matthews slept. Evidently dazed by the fire, she dashed out of her room and made for the narrow, winding stairs. She was turned back before reaching them and ran past her own room to a room beyond, where her body was found after the fire. A tragic aspect is that the window of her room faced directly upon an escape. The brigade made an extraordinary' save of the building, which was of lath and plaster partitioning, wooden floors, and joists, and cardboard wallboard surrounding the main lift well. Their immediate task after leading in the first hoses was to assist the boarders to escape through heavy smoke and past danger on every landing to the ground floor. Their difficulties were increased by the fact that the lights had failed before they arrived.

Eight machines and about 60 men were engaged. A very large number of salvage sheets were used to protect the furniture and bedding, and the loss in this respect is very small. Miss Matthews’s parents reside at Miramar.