A large wood yard and saw-mill, four small weaving factories and ten Chinese houses were destroyed or gutted by a fire in Kwenming Road yesterday afternoon.
The fire, whose origin was sus pected to have been incendiary, started at about 2 o'clock and bumed for three hours before it was extinguished, The Shanghai Fire Brigade was notified and the firemen were permitted to function. After a hard fight they extinguished the flames. No one was injured. There were no occupants in any of the buildings when the Fire Brigade arrived.
The fire was one of the largest in the Shanghai area yesterday and the column of smoke was visible for a considerable distance despite the bad weather.
Sub-Officer E. C. Molineux, who was injured at a fire in the same neighbourhood on September 7, was still in a plaster cast yesterday. His neck was seriously affected by a fall at the blaze in the Whashing Tobacco Factory, Paoting Road, during the morning of September 7. The factory buildings had been suspected of housing snipers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.