16 Minutes

Tuesday is a dull shopping day in Christchurch, New Zealand. At 4 p.m. last Tuesday there were hardly more shoppers than clerks in Ballantyne's, biggest department store in South Island. Many of the staff, following Christchurch custom, were at afternoon tea or were just ambling back to their counters. They smelled fire and saw wisps of smoke but, told that firemen were arriving, carried on with their jobs. Then, in a twinkling, the acre-wide building was a pillar of flame. Fire broke from the shallow basement, seared the main floor, exploded upward to the second and third.

Passers-by saw girls screaming at top-floor windows; then blasts of fire blotted them from sight. Moments later some of the same figures could be seen again, burned to blackened skeletons. The heat melted stonework to limy slag. In all, the destruction lasted just 16 minutes. Firemen counted 41 dead, none positively identifiable, in the worst fire disaster in Dominion history. Two days later, when New Zealand put out flags to celebrate the royal wedding, Christchurch flags flew at halfmast.

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