Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Fire destroys Marlborough grain store
A fire destroys a grain store at the Blenheim railway station, this week 110 years ago, as we take a flick through the archives. From the Marlborough Express, March 23, 1914:
In the course of one sensational hour or so on Saturday afternoon, a material portion of the Marlborough harvest of 1913-14 was transformed from an influential marketable commodity into a mass of comparatively worthless debris, counting for nothing in the mercantile circles where it was a factor of much consequence.
Messrs J. J. Corry and Co.’s iron building on the river side of the Blenheim railway station was the most capacious grain store in the district, and, being fully stocked at the time, contained over 22,000 sacks of malting barley, about 2400 sacks of seed peas, and quantities of binder twine and general merchandise. The collection of barley, it is believed, was the largest held under one roof in Now Zealand. It represented some 25 per cent of the last season’s barley output in Marlborough. The “carry-over” from the previous season was a small one.
The firebells rang out at about two o’clock and imposing volumes of black smoke, scintillating with sparks, were seen to belch up, and, impelled by a fair wind from the south-east, roll over Grove Road and obscure the northern sky.
The grain-dressing machinery in the
building had been operating continuously for six weeks, being worked on shifts at high pressure, in order that the urgent requirements of Messrs Corry and Co.’s clients might be satisfied.
Eight men were employed in the store throughout the morning, and six of the staff left for luncheon at one o’clock, Messrs Barrett and Roberts remaining in charge.
A number of the men returned at about 1.45, and shortly afterwards it was noticed that flames, with their seat apparently under or in the flooring, were bursting out near the 14 h.p. gas engine driving the machinery.
The staff tackled the outbreak promptly, but the fire, catching the fluff on the bags of grain filling up all available space, ran along with lightning rapidity, and, it is said, attained a fury beyond all hope of resistance when the gas receptacle of the gas engine exploded.
Within a few moments, in fact, the building had to be hurriedly deserted, and one of the staff, Mr Martella, barely escaped with his life, having to fight his way through dense smoke and advancing flames.
The cause of the outbreak is wholly speculative.
There was an unusually large number of people in town, and the alarm was followed by an exciting rush through the main streets and across the railway line. The whirling traffic and the moving trains constituted not a small source of danger, but the crowds that watched the conflagration assembled and dispersed without accident.