Lozells

Nor Me Lyn

Do you see that Mission Hall, years later we demolished that when it was a fire salvage warehouse that had caught fire. We were sent in after the fire to make it safe. We only had to bring it down to first floor level.

Fire damaged buildings are the worst sort of building you can work on. As it was so dangerous I was on site myself working. My uncle turned up on site to see how we were getting on. I was standing on a wall on the front of the building (a long time before Health & Safety) and another lad was standing on an adjoining wall. My uncle came up the stairs inside the building and was standing about 8 ft below me on the first floor.

There was a piece of wood sticking out from a door frame and he just kicked off so he wouldn't trip over it. The door frame just collapsed in with all the walls around it. Including the walls we were standing on. The other lad and I jumped to other parts of the building. As we jumped I saw my uncle disappear through the floor and all the walls fall in on him.

Of course we were stuck up high on the walls with no way of getting down, We couldn't see a thing because of the dust. When the dust settled we saw my uncle uncover himself from beneath the fallen bricks and stagger into the street. By the time one of the other lads had got us down with a ladder, he was sitting on a wall over the road having a cup of tea. Apart from a few minor scratches he was unharmed.

Phil

That's when demolition guy's earned their corn Phil.

You know what annoyed us the most, all the fire salvage goods were still inside the warehouse and we didn't have time to get them out (well not officially) We just had to make the building safe by dropping all the high level walls into the building.

Phil

That's a pain, I'll bet that would have been worth a few bob.

I remember there were at least 20 rolls of carpet on racks, you know the type you see in carpet warehouses. There was also hundreds of gallons of paint in half pint, pint & quart tins. There was loads of stuff that we could have sold on.

But why worry we got a good price because as far as we were concerned there was nothing salvageable. So the company we did the job for had to pay a good price, but I suppose they got it back off the insurance company.

Phil

There's surely some irony, or something like that, in the fact that the goods were fire salvage and then almost became fire salvage a second time.
I wouldn't have wanted anything from that lot, it was all jinxed.
VM