AUCKLAND BLAZE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 94, 23 April 1942, Page 5

AUCKLAND BLAZE

TIMBER MILL GUTTED FLAMES’ RAPID SPREAD LOSS ESTIMATED AT £50,000 (P.A.) Auckland, April 22. Irreplaceable machinery, some of which had been installed only a fortnight previously, was destroyed, and several persons had narrow escapes from being engulfed in flames, when lire gutted a large part of the timber yard and factory of the Kauri Timber Company at Freeman’s Bay this afternoon. The departments destroyed were the saw mill, planing mill, joinery factory and box department. Heavy stocks of timber in the pond and an adjoining yard were saved, but the value of these was small in comparison with the property destroyed. The insurance cover on the buildings, machinery and stock was reported by the New Zealand Insurance Company to be 162,000. In the absence ot the manager, Mr. J. J. Jackson, who was visiting milling areas at Coromandel, the managing director, Mr. G. Trippner, was unable to give any indication of insurances on the gutted portions of the premises, but it was clear that the loss was upwards of £50,01i0. Only last week the firm began work on large military contracts, including hutments, a number of which were ready to go out. These, with hundreds of thousands of feet of timber prepared for others, were lost. The most remarkable feature of the fire was the rapidity with which it spread. Within seconds of the men in the boiler-room cellar noticing a slight lire, combustion, spreading through the air in almost explosive fashion, enveloped the cellar and burst into the first floor. The ground floor of the Kauri Timber Company premises was occupied by the planing mill on the west side, the band-saw department in the centre and the box department to the east. All these were gutted, as was the joinery factory, wnich was laid out above them. A high and thick brick wall of great age, lying to the east of the box department, stopped the spread of the lire, saving the timber yard wnich lies on its other side. The lire swept through the gutted section over a width of a hundred yards and lor the full depth, from the Fanshawe Street frontage to the waterfront. While several workmen in the factory agreed that the later than 1.15 p.m., it was nut until 1.30 p.m. that the city fire briga le received the first alarm from a street box. Apparently the lightning-like spread of tne flames gave each department the impression that the outbreak was in another section, from which the alarm would already have been given. The brigade arrived within four minutes oi the sounding of the alarm, but by then nothing could be done for the burning buildings. and the firemen wore fully extended to stop it spreading to the premises of the Leyland O'Bncn Company to the west, the Kauri Timber Company’s open yard to the east, and along the staging of the wharf, where the towboat Lyttelton was for a time threatened. 01 the 70 men working in the building almost all narrowly escaped with their lives, and all lost then street clothing, money, kits and tools. The fact Viat there were hair a dozen stairways connecting the uppei and lower floors with the three main exits to Fanshawe Street, and another at the rear to the waterfront, made it just possible for 20 men on the ground floor and 50 in the joinery factory above to get clear. Six persons were taken to the general hospital for treatment, besides others treated on the spot. The only serious cases were: William D. Thompson, machinist, aged 55 years, of Westmere, who suffered a fractured pelvis when he jumped from the upper floor. George Menzies, auxiliary fireman aged 32. who#was hit on the back of the head by the flying end of an overhead electric cable which had burned in two while still alive. He suffered shock, burns on the neck and abrasions on the fact. For the first time in his fire-fighting service Deputy-Sup-rintendent C. A. McKenzie was knocked out when a big lead got out of control for a few seconds. The jet shot over the roadway, knocking several persons down. The nozzle repeatedly struck McKenzie in the stomach, and he was rendered unconscious for a short time. Half a dozen mon made their escape from the upper floor in the nick of time through the services of two passing motorists. Hearing cries o. | “Help!” they stopped and placed a ladder against the blazing frontage.

Heavy smoke was billowing all round the men above and a few were in a state of collapse when they reached the ground. No sooner were they all clear than the ladder itself caught alight. The St. John Ambulance Brigade set up a station in a shed opposite the lire and treated a number of people lor minor nurns and injuries. Among them were William Elliott, a liremaT who sprained an ankle; Bernard Stevenson, a machinist, who was struck by falling timber and stunned. Overcome oy smoke at the edge of the ire, he was dragged to safety by an E.P.S. medical worker. TRAGEDY FEARED (P.A.) 9 .\,,:i1|22. Grave anxiety was ielt to-night for the safety ol one of the employees of the Kauri 'limber Company who was working on the upper floor when the fire which razed the premises broke out, Percy Reginald Wells, aged 03. The roil call at the fire in the afternoon was considered to have satisfactorily accounted for all the men who had been in the building, but when Wells failed to return to his home in the evening inquiries were instituted by his relatives. Radio broadcasts asking for information, and extensive inquiries bv the police, produced no result, and at a late hour the police were still making an investigation. A son said hh father was lame through an injury, which had produced a shortening of one leg. In addition his nervous condition had for some time been unsatisfactory.