Ballantynes fire

Roger Ballantyne, one of the joint managing directors, was here when the first fire appliance arrived. That was two minutes after the first call came in, around 3:46 PM on Tuesday, November 18, 1947. The firefighters didn't see any fire at the Lichfield Street entrance, so they went to Colombo Street, where they saw smoke from an alleyway. Roger Ballantyne met them there and showed them a back way to the cellar.

The fire started in the basement of the furniture department, in the southern part of the Colombo Street frontage. No one ever figured out the exact cause, though an electrical fault or a cigarette butt were suggested. The employee last in the cellar, Keith Smith, had left around 3:30 PM for his tea break and went across the street to smoke a cigarette, since Ballantynes had a strict no-smoking policy.

Around 3:30 PM, an employee noticed smoke coming up the stairs and asked a colleague to call the fire brigade. There was no formal evacuation plan. Staff told their floor managers, and someone called the phone operator. Some ground-floor showrooms were evacuated, but in others, management told staff to 'carry on' or 'stand by.' Some left anyway when they got uncomfortable. Many staff weren't even told about the fire because there was no alarm.

The fire brigade spent about 10 minutes looking for the source of the fire in the cellar but couldn't find it. Two other appliances had arrived via Cashel Street. The senior fire officer ordered a Brigade Call, but that order wasn't received until 4:00 PM. The firefighter had to push through the crowd to a pharmacy and wait for the phone lines to clear.

About half an hour after it was discovered, the heat and smoke here went into flashover, and the conjoined first floors of the Congreve's, Goodman's, and Pratt's buildings erupted in flames. The first floor was almost instantly consumed, and superheated gas and fire started moving into the floors above. This fire killed 41 people, making it the deadliest fire in New Zealand's history.