With the return of the two fire-floats from the A-P.C. installation down river yesterday morning, full details were obtained of the saving of the two main tanks containing thousands of tons of lubricating and other oil. "A vast quantity of 50- gallon drums of oil and wax containers caught fire or blew up, to the peril of the small band of firemen from the Harbour Fire Brigade. The work of fighting the fire was carried out under the personal direction of Mr. W. J, German, Chief Fire Officer of the brigade, who did not return to his home until late yesterday morning.
Two bombs were dropped by the Chinese planes, which were apparently aiming at a Japanese cruiser in mid-stream, and the godowns caught fire: this spread to the oil drums. The wharf coolies immediately fled, and the foreign resident engineer had to board a launch and proceed all the way up river to summon the Fire Brigade, the Pootung telephone service being totally interrupted.
The bombs were dropped at 4.15 pan, and the Poochi and the Huning were on the scene by 5.40 pin., the delay being due both to the lack of communications and the strong ebb tide.
Both fire floats were soon in action with their biggest hoses, pumping water on the flames at a rate of over 8,000 gallons a minute. So. strong. was the pressure on the hoses that the Gremen frequently lost their footing and slipped and stumbled in their attempts to bring the powerful jets of water to bear where they did the most good.
At times, the main tanks seemed to be enveloped in sheets of flame, but long and strenuous work nally resulted in their being cut off from the danger. The iremen were severely handicapped by the huge clouds of black smoke, the typhoon wind and the terrific heat which often grew so intense that the firemen had to turn their backs. Drums exploded and shot high into the air, while melted wax flowed everywhere, and the sixteen or so firemen were standing in literally two feet of melted wax.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.