Glasgow's Fire Brigade - Casualties of Fire

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Postby AlanM » Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:38 pm

It was in the late seventies, a builder on the roof of the Airlie St building was rather careless with a blow torch and the builing burnt down. The school remained operational with classes being bussed to the old Balshagry Primary (now part of Anniesland college) whilst the building was rebuilt.

Taking full advantage of the fire they put the Science, Modern Language, Technical, Music, Drama and Secretarial depts into the refurbished building with nice new shiny facilities like a language lab, purpose built science labs, music practice rooms and the old central well was filled with a large lecture theatre.
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Postby ChrisWoods » Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:45 pm

Alex Glass wrote:
tobester wrote:Is there anyone with pictures of the fire at hyndland secondary, ive seen some of the school afterwards but not during


When was this Tob?


The Hyndland fire would have been around 1979/80/81, I can't remember exactly, but I started Secondary at hyndland 1982 by which time the Airlie Street building which was gutted by the fire was completely re-furbished and re-opened.

The fire was caused by a workman on the roof dropping a torch into the building, it happened at lunch time so there was no pupils in at the time and luckily there was no casualties.

In the interim period during re-furbishment, first and second year puplis attented school at the annexe in Balshagary School.

I'm sure there's information about it and maybe even pictures on friends reunited but I can't check just now due to being at work.

Will check and post more later, my sister was there at the time.
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Postby ChrisWoods » Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:53 pm

AlanM wrote:It was in the late seventies, a builder on the roof of the Airlie St building was rather careless with a blow torch and the builing burnt down. The school remained operational with classes being bussed to the old Balshagry Primary (now part of Anniesland college) whilst the building was rebuilt.

Taking full advantage of the fire they put the Science, Modern Language, Technical, Music, Drama and Secretarial depts into the refurbished building with nice new shiny facilities like a language lab, purpose built science labs, music practice rooms and the old central well was filled with a large lecture theatre.


The jewel in the crown was the 'state of the art' language lab mentioned above, each desk has it's own built in cassette deck complete with headphones, how times have changed :oops:
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Postby Simba » Wed Jan 31, 2007 4:00 pm

ChrisWoods wrote:
AlanM wrote:It was in the late seventies, a builder on the roof of the Airlie St building was rather careless with a blow torch and the builing burnt down. The school remained operational with classes being bussed to the old Balshagry Primary (now part of Anniesland college) whilst the building was rebuilt.

Taking full advantage of the fire they put the Science, Modern Language, Technical, Music, Drama and Secretarial depts into the refurbished building with nice new shiny facilities like a language lab, purpose built science labs, music practice rooms and the old central well was filled with a large lecture theatre.


The jewel in the crown was the 'state of the art' language lab mentioned above, each desk has it's own built in cassette deck complete with headphones, how times have changed :oops:


My school (newly built in 77 I think) had that too. I wonder what any new schools being built today would have instead. It was still a pretty good system though for the time - you could record yourself speaking and play it back.
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Postby ChrisWoods » Wed Jan 31, 2007 4:14 pm

Simba wrote:


My school (newly built in 77 I think) had that too. I wonder what any new schools being built today would have instead. It was still a pretty good system though for the time - you could record yourself speaking and play it back.


I imagined the modern classroom to be a bank of flat screen monitors but I asked my sister about this recently (a teacher) and she told me that the classroom hadn't really changed much in all those years.
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Postby tobester » Wed Jan 31, 2007 4:44 pm

was 81 i think.

My sister went to hyndland in 81 and she had to be bussed between there and balshgary, i went up in 83 but the new building was completed.


Always heard that the workmen were putting in fire doors and fire prevention equipment, and they hadn't yet done the attic, where the fire started, altho i had heard a curtain blew onto the torch starting the fire and when it hit the gas tanks for the science labs, the shit hit the fan
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Postby viceroy » Wed Jan 31, 2007 9:45 pm

All this has brought back memories of a Glasgow fire I was personally involved in.

It was December 1973 and I was working in an office at 80 Buchanan Street, in the building to the right of the Royal Bank of Scotland as shown in this picture which hazy posted a while back.

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Although you cannot see it in the picture this building actually has a 3rd floor and at the time this comprised the offices of a long defunct Glasgow shipping agency called Roxburgh, Henderson & Co. Ltd. They also had part of the 2nd floor, which was where the accounts department and the typing pool were. I had not been with them for very long, only since August of that year in fact. The main entrance to the building was on Buchanan Street beside the Paige dress shop and there was also a side entrance next door to the Rogano, in the passage leading to Royal Exchange Square.

As far as I can remember it was shortly after lunchtime on a Friday afternoon. I had to go down to the 2nd floor to see somebody in the accounts department and as I crossed the landing which led to the back stairs [which were at the Royal Exchange Square end of the building] I thought I heard a faint rumbling noise coming from somewhere. However my mind was occupied with work and I didn’t pay much attention to it. A few minutes later I came back up the stairs and this time the noise was quite noticeable, in fact it was almost like a roar. Puzzled, I looked round about me and almost immediately realised where this was coming from. The source of the noise was behind a wooden hatch just above my head, set vertically in the wall of the stairwell. It gave access to the roofspace. Not only was the noise becoming progressively louder but to my horror I could also see flames beginning to consume the wooden hatch itself and furthermore the stairwell area was starting to fill up with smoke.

I ran into the office and shouted FIRE! For a moment everybody looked at me as if I had gone completely insane, particularly when they saw me take off one of my shoes and use it to smash the glass of the fire alarm point beside the door. However, it was quickly realised that this was for real, the management took over and the building was immediately evacuated via the Buchanan Street exit.

When we got outside we could already see a large cloud of smoke billowing up from the roof. However the Fire Brigade were on the scene within minutes. They managed to get the fire under control fairly quickly and were able to confine most of the serious damage to the roofspace. The Glasgow Salvage Corps was also present and they put sheeting across all the desks in the 3rd floor office so that the loss of documentation etc through water damage was kept to a minimum.

The fire was reported in the late news section of the Evening Times and here is the clipping. Note that they only seem concerned about the Rogano staff, with not a single mention of the people who had been most at risk, namely ourselves on the 3rd floor of the building.

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Later in the afternoon a few of us were allowed back in. This is a picture of the more or less habitable end of the office after things had been cleared up a bit. That is me sitting at the bottom right of the picture. I have to say that the Salvage Corps did a really good job – without their protection efforts it would have been much more difficult to get things moving again.

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The following week the chairman of the company called me into his inner sanctum. This was Mr. I.A. Lyall, D.S.C., V.R.D., D.L., F.I.C.S., president of the Glasgow & Clyde Shipowners Association. I was praised for my initiative at raising the alarm etc etc and, with a patronising flourish, handed an envelope containing 25 quid. This was certainly a fair lump of cash in those days and I was grateful for having it. However it was but a minute fraction of the business the firm would probably have lost had the damage been serious enough to make the almost immediate continuance of operations impossible.

One thing I do wonder about and that is what might have been the outcome if I or somebody else had not just happened to discover the fire at that particular time. Left to its own devices, would the blaze have come through the ceiling onto the dozens of people working in the office below? Would some people have become trapped? Or would the noise of the fire have increased to the point where everybody would have been alerted and given sufficient time to get out? Whatever, that is is not a scenario I wish to dwell on.
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Postby Ally Doll » Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:49 pm

That's fascinating Viceroy - you're a proper hero too! 8)

Also reassuring(?) to see that the reporters in the Evening Times haven't gotten any better over the years.
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Postby HollowHorn » Wed Jan 31, 2007 11:32 pm

This thread is shaping up to be a cracker.

Hillhead Underground Station:
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Hope yer no in a hurry! ::):
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Postby glasgowken » Thu Feb 01, 2007 12:39 am

Brilliant story viceroy, and well done. I'd have just run around like a headless chicken in a situation like that :)
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Postby Alex Glass » Thu Feb 01, 2007 7:07 pm

Fantastic story Viceroy.

As Ally Doll said you are a true hero.

Thanks for sharing your story with us. It is this type of story that makes HG such a great site.
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Postby Simba » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:50 pm

Scran has some photos of the St George's Cross fire, including one captioned 'unconscious fireman being pulled from building'.
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Postby pwm437 » Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:09 pm

From my own researches into the history of Glasgow streets here are a few fire's I've uncovered at the Mitchell :

01) 33 Abbotsford Place : two men die in house fire 7th January 1970
02) 66 Albert Road : bakery premises of A F Reid damaged by fire 26th April 1964
03) 249 Allison Street : 48 y.o. woman died in house fire
04) 33/47 Argyle Stret : 13 women killed at Graftons shop on 4th May 1949
05) 36/48 Argyle Street : Woolworths badly damaged by fire 20th October 1960
06) 69 Armadale Street : 75 y.o woman died in house fire 18th January 1960
07) 22/24 Armour Street : factory premises of Nories Sausages damaged by fire on 4th May 1962

Anyone have any memories of the above ?
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Postby crusty_bint » Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:29 pm

pwm437 wrote:Anyone have any memories of the above ?


Dugald?

...sorry, couldnt resist ::): :D
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Postby viceroy » Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:48 pm

I don't remember any of these but I do remember the Glasgow Academy on Colebrooke St. at Kelvinbridge being badly damaged by fire during the 1950's, although I can't remember the actual year, perhaps 1956 or 1957. I lived in Belmont St. and came home from school one afternoon to find the street strewn with firehoses and fire engines everywhere. It was a pretty large scale emergency although I don't think there were any casualties.

No doubt the Mitchell has pictures of this. I know it was headline news in the Glasgow Bulletin which my parents used to get.
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