FREAKS OF BIG EXPLOSIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 282, 26 November 1921, Page 17

FREAKS OF BIG EXPLOSIONS.

The reports of the great explosion at the Baden Aniline Dye Works at Oppau, in Germany, show quite clearly that the disaster was true to type. In this as in every occurrence of a. similar character the most curious and inexplicable sequels are to be noted, writes a correspondent in the '"Daily Mail." When 1 read that of four tall factory chimneys in the explosion area three were still standing, while the fourth had been reduced to a. stump, I realised that in essential characteristics the occurrence was .similar to all the other explosions which have devastated the earth.

Theoretically you might suppose that if an enormous disturbance took place at any point, everything within a given. area around that point would be similarly affected. You might imagine, for instance, that every building within a radius of anything from a hundred yards to ten miles (varying with the force of the explosion) would be flattened. Experience proves that this i 3 •exactly what does not happen.

A great explosion is the most inexplicable and irrational thing that can be imagined. In its action it <-oems always determined to illustrate the old saying that '"one shall be taken and another left." Jt hurls death to points thousands of yards away, and leaves untouched ail sort- <>f fantastic details within its immediate area.

The war taught us something of thp essential crankin??* of these violent catastrophes. I remember a day in the country behind Halonica. when :i raiding German aeroplane dropped a bomb neat" our camp. After the dust hail cleaved away it was found that a mule had been blown i into fragments, while the man who had (been leading the mulu was .sitting up rubbing the out of his eyes, and looking for someone to tell him what

had happened. Similar thing.* happened ovi>r :U"I over again in London during ihc air ruuK There iva-. fur instance, llie r;i-c of il

house near Kii.L'"- Cross which was almost entirely wrecked by a bomb. On the top Hour of it « fragment of wall remained, and on it there bun;; picture-, utterly undisturbed by the disaster that had raged about them. There an- also the case of another air raid where the salvage party found .1 canary hopping about ami chirping wistfully on a heap of smoking ruins--with never :i vestige of ita cage to be seen. All the tortured area of France and Flanders is full of similar memories. To take only one instance, there was a

house in Arras whose front had been blown away by a shell. On the mantelpiece of one of the upper rooms delicate glass ornaments were found untouched and unharmed.

The greatest explosion which London has eve- known—the blowing up of the Brunner-Mond factory at SilvertOVVn in \9l7_left records of similarly inexplicable happenings. I was in London on leave at the time, and I was in the explosion area within two hours of that enormous noise which convinced every Londoner that a bomb had dropped in the next street to his own. Close to the factory I found a house which had been shattered, but on the rpniainins fragment oi the lirst floor a light wickervrork chair stood unmoved on the spot which it bad occupied before that horrid tumult came. And I know or nt Va-t one case where in a house five miles away a woman was hurled across a room by the force of that explosion, while others who were sitting with her wore left unshaken in their places. You cannot tell, you cannot ?w--=.

what a big explosion will do ur wli.it it will leave undone. In --'mc way wlncn science has not yet been able tn explain the tremendous vibrations which arc set up carry disaster fur lioyond their reasonable limit«-aml U-.tvv _ unharmrJ tlie most trilling thins:- »»"■'' 'loom, one would have thought, wa- certain.