ESCAPE IN PYJAMAS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 27, 3 February 1939, Page 8

ESCAPE IN PYJAMAS

AITKEN STREET AN INFERNO "When I opened the front door of the house it was ablaze: Aitken Street was an inferno, flames extending right across the road." In this sentence Mr. I J. P. Kavanagh, editor of The New Zealand Law Journal, summed up vividly something of the experiences of those who- were caught in their night attire in the burning houses opposite the big wooden building. Mi-. Kavanagh lived at 16 Aitken Street, the residence of Mr. J. Malton Murray, and his room, he said in an interview to-day, was on the side remote from the Social Security building. i "I was awakened by my window glass breaking," said Mr. Kavanagh. ("I saw in the passage-way between . the house and the Wests’ house next door a shower of burning felt material. I went, along to the flat on the same floor to see that the people there were out. All I had time to do was to grab a pair of shoes and a few clothes out of the wardrobe. "When 1 got downstairs and opened Ihe front door Aitken Street was a furnace of flame. The front door of the house was blazing, and though 1 did not open it wide my eyebrows were singed. I closed the door and got out of the house al the hack. Over the whole of the area there burning flakes were falling. “With the clothes 1 had grabbed from the wardrobe still tucked under an arm I climbed over some fences ]and eventually got into the timber i yard on the opposite side of the road from the Social Security building. By this time parts of my pyjamas were burning. The timber in the yard was starting to burn. As I got over the I big iron fence it buckled under me. It was red hot and I burned my left hand. After climbing this fence I got into Mulgrave Street, and after I had done so I saw that the wooden houses in Aiken Street were just a seething mass of flame. "My pyjamas were burned in many places, and my legs and body also suffered burns. When I got to Mulgrave Street I put on the clothes T had hastily gathered. It was raining at the time, and there was not a very strong wind blowing, but it was sufficient to fan the flames and turn Aitken Street, into a blazing inferno. Even the roadway was burning." Mr. Kavanagh spent the night with a barrister friend, from whom, in order to come into town to-day, he had to borrow socks and a shirt. With ' the exception of the few things he was j able to grab. Mr. Kavanagh lost all the personal belongings he had in the house.