HOTEL EXPLOSION.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20455, 7 November 1934, Page 5

HOTEL EXPLOSION.

Building Shaken to Its Foundations. PECULIAR MISHAP. Caused by a piece of iron spouting making contact with a high tension electric wire outside the building, a terrific explosion of two oxygen cylinders shook the North Richmond Hotel, in Melbourne, to its foundations recently. A remarkable feature of a series of exciting incidents was that, although 15 men were in the danger zone, no one was injured. n The sequence of events began when Mr Alfred Brown, plumber, was holding the spouting on the roof of a twostoreyed building next to the hotel. A gust of wind caught the spouting and blew it on to one of eight high-tension j wires on top of a post a few feet away. There was a blinding flash, the lights of the hotel and an adjacent shop went out, and a moment later the explosion occurred in the cellar of the hotel. Men standing in the bar and three people in the kitchen were knocked off their feet. Flames darted up from the cellar through cracks in the bar floorMr H. 11. Jemmett. who was in the bar, said that spurts of flame 6ft high came up from the cellar. His war experience made him realise the danger J °f gas, and when one of the barmen | made an attempt to open the trapdoor j to the cellar he tried to dissuade him. j The man, however, wrapped’ a wet towel around his mouth and nose, dashed into the cellar and turned off the ;as in the oxygen cylinders. Mr Brown said that he was lucky not to have been electrocuted when Ihe spouting touched the electric wire. Ie must have released his hold only a zecond before the contact.