The Ballantynes fire

Ballantynes was a prestigious department store and a local institution in central Christchurch. The 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand describes a three-storey store in Colombo Street that covered a full acre (about 0.4 hectares) and held £300,000 worth of stock, much of it flammable and much of it in the basement. Te Ara says the store consisted of seven linked buildings; NZHistory says there were eight, joined in 'a perplexing maze' by openings in the walls. NZHistory puts the staff at 458, while Te Ara refers to 300 store employees. According to Te Ara, the store had no evacuation plan and there had never been a fire drill. In November 1947 the city was busy with visitors and shoppers after Cup Week and Show Day.

The fire began in a basement on the afternoon of 18 November 1947. Te Ara places it under the furniture department, and NZHistory says it is thought to have started in the basement of the Congreves building. Between 250 and 300 people were shopping in the store. Te Ara says smoke was discovered just after 3.30 p.m.; according to NZHistory, at about 3.35 p.m. staff member Percy Stringer saw smoke coming from the stairwell to the basement and asked Edith Drake to alert the fire brigade and management to a 'cellar fire'. Stringer and other staff, including the assistant manager, Roger Ballantyne, tried in vain to put it out. The first call the brigade logged came at 3.46 p.m. When firefighters arrived at 3.48 p.m., undermanned and ill-equipped to deal with anything larger than a cellar fire, the blaze was already out of control. Te Ara notes that the brigade's two most senior officers were on leave and the officer in charge was inexperienced.

On the ground floor, staff assumed the fire could be contained, and no general evacuation was ordered. Staff returning from a tea break were told to go back to work, and one customer entered the store as late as 3.56 p.m. Individual staff members cleared their own areas, and all the customers and most of the staff escaped. Te Ara says there was a delay before the office workers, dressmakers and milliners (hat makers) on the upper floors were told to leave, and some women were ordered by their supervisors to stay where they were. The dressmakers got down the stairs just as the upper parts of the store began to collapse. Office workers in the credit department stayed to shut up the office equipment and then could not use the fire escape because of the smoke and heat. Three women jumped from windows; two were rescued from the verandah, and one died of her injuries. Only two milliners reached the fire escape, and seven died after collapsing from smoke inhalation.

About two hours after the alarm was given, firemen reached the ground floor and found the first bodies. At a roll-call at King Edward Barracks at 8 p.m., 49 staff did not answer. Thirty-eight staff had died in the fire, and Violet Cody, who was pregnant with her first child, died after jumping from the building. Two auditors from the firm Stewart, Beckett and Company were also killed, bringing the toll to 41 in what NZHistory and Te Ara both describe as New Zealand's deadliest fire. The 1966 Encyclopaedia says the bodies could not be identified and were buried in a common grave. At a civic funeral on Sunday 23 November about 800 family and friends filled Christchurch Cathedral, and about 10,000 people attended the graveside service at Ruru Lawn Cemetery in Bromley.

A royal commission of inquiry sat for 65 days and heard 186 witnesses. It found that although the fire was an accident, many lives could have been saved if action had been taken earlier. It concluded that brigade officers had failed on arrival to realise how dangerous the situation was, and that the store's construction was unsafe, with no emergency procedures, alarms or means of contacting the fire brigade automatically. NZHistory says the commission found that Ballantynes and the fire brigade shared responsibility for the high loss of life, and that its recommendations were a catalyst for change in the way public buildings safeguarded staff and customers. The commission proposed a national fire service, but this was rejected by those who feared losing local control; instead the Fire Services Act 1949 set up a Fire Service Council to coordinate fire services, direct training and distribute equipment. When Ballantynes reopened on the same site in temporary premises in 1948, fire alarms were installed. A memorial rose garden at Ruru Lawn Cemetery has a bronze marker for each person who died.