HEROINE AT FIRE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 116, 19 May 1933, Page 8

HEROINE AT FIRE

WOMAN SAVES SIX CHILDREN REPEATED DASHES INTO FLAMES Six children were saved from death in a Bannockburn house the other day by the gallant conduct of a woman who repeatedly dashed into a blazing room. The heroine is Mrs Sinclair, l of Old Town, Bannockburn. Mrs. Sinclair shares a house with a Mrs. Wood and when she heard screams coming from th 6 room occupied by Mrs. Wood and her family she rushed in to find Afargaret Wood, aged 18 months, and Margaret Rodgers, aged three years, a niece of Mrs. Wood, lying on a bed which was on fire. Picking up the little girls, Airs. Sinclair ran with them to the landing - and handed them to a neighbour. She then dashed back to rescue Frank Wood, aged five. Fighting her way through the smoke to the kitchen she found her own three boys, James, aged five; William, aged throe; and John, who is only three months old, and brought them to safety. Overcome by the smoke she collapsed on reaching the landing. The house was now burning fiercely and the tenants of the building left their apartments while Robert AlcCormack, followed by five other men, climbed up a pipe. He attached a length of hosepipe to a kitchen tap and, with the assistance of the others, played water on tho flames until the arrival of the Stirling fire brigade.

Airs. Sinclair and the children escaped injury, but everything in the room occupied by Airs. Wood and her family was destroyed.