FIRE ENGINE AND TWO MOTOR-CARS IN VIOLENT COLLISION

Wanganui Chronicle, 1 February 1950, Page 5

FIRE ENGINE AND TWO MOTOR-CARS IN VIOLENT COLLISION

AUCKLAND, Last Night (PA).— A fire engine was wrecked, two motor cars extensively damaged, and three people hurt in a collisoon this afternoon at the corner of ML. Eden and Wairiki roads, Mt. Eden. After being involved in a collision with the first car, the fire engine struck a power pole and careered along the pavement within a few feet of shop windows and hurtled into a hairdresser’s window. At the same time it collided with a second car which was parked at the kerb.

James Bradley* aged 59, a married commercial traveller of Wairiki Road, the driver of the first car, suffered concussion and was admitted to hospital. Noel Francis Matheson, aged 24, single, of the Mt. Eden Fire Station, driver of the engine, received bruises and cuts to the face. Miss Agnes Nicholas, aged 30, of EUerton Road, Mt. Eden, received bruises and cuts to the legs. She was struck by flying debris while waiting for a tramcar near a power pole. Both these injured were taken to the Auckland Hospital and treated at the casualty ward and sent home.

After the first impact at the intersection, the fire engine swerved toward the shops on the other side of the road, dragging Bradly’s car with it. The whole right-hand side of the engine was torn off as it collided with the pole, and the door of the hose locker was flung into a butcher s shop owned by Mr. H. Lousich. Spraying windows of the three other shops with foam from the fire extinguisher, the engine skidded along the pavement and finally crashed into the window of a barber’s shop, owned by Mr. V. S. Pointon. A parked car was wedged between the fire engine and Bradley’s car and the three vehicles ended together in a tangled heap. The owner of the parked car, Mr. E. P. Carter, of Mt. Eden Road, was having his hair cut in the shop at the time.