REAL FIRE BUG SCARES MELBOURNE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17830, 26 April 1926, Page 10

REAL FIRE BUG SCARES MELBOURNE.

MANIAC USES PETROL AND LIGHTS HEDGES. 1 SYDNEY. April 16. Residents of St Kilda, Melbourne, have been victims of the strangest incendiarist in years this week. Ilis particular mania is to set valuable hedges alight, and he has already caused hundreds of pounds’ worth of damage. Four hedges were destroyed in that manner on Wednesday morning. One of them, almost completely burnt down, was valued by the owner, who had difficulty in setting it and keeping it alive, at between £SOO and £6OO. Another was set alight while members of the night wireless patrol were searching for the incendiary on the beach about fifty yards away.

The St Kilda and Windsor fire brigades were kept busy following the incendiarist’s trail, and no sooner did they extinguish one blaze than another broke out in the vicinity. Some of the residences had narrow escapes, and in several instances residents. waking up .suddenly and seeing flames almost outside their bedroom windows, ran out into the streets in their night attire. In front of one burnt hedge firemen found a ball of straw, apparently dropped by the incendiary in his haste to make his escape. The police think that he saturated the straw in petrol and threw it into the hedge.