CINEMA FIRE.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17315, 29 November 1921, Page 7

CINEMA FIRE.

. . « AMERICAN THEATOE DISASTER. PIPTY DEAD, HUNDREDS > INJURED. GBy O»W«—Pr«9 Association— Copyright.) (Australian *nd N.Z. Cabl* Association.) (Received November 2Sth, 8.15 p.ra.) NEW YORK, November 27. The correspondent of the "New Yorh Times'' at Now Haven, Connecticut, says it is believed that fifty persona are dead, 500 seriously burned, und hundreds of others seriously injured through a cinema theatre explosion. A later message says that more than 1000 persons crowded the Rialto Theatle, ■which was an old, renovated structure,, highly inflammable, half tlhe. numbeT being students at Yale University, which is situated at New Haven. It was a custom of the night management to present a tableau, in which incense Tvaa burned, as a preliminary to the cinema showing. There was a sudden explosion, which the police attribute to one of three onuses—the tinderlike rafters caught fire from the incense, crossed electric wires, or an explosion of film. The flame, with one toot, enveloped the audience, none of wfliom was found to have escaped without some injury. The vast majority were burned or singed. Burning persons fled madly, trampling over others who had fallen in attempting to escape the fire, which in a few minutes spread to several other buildings, whidh were deetroyed. Tho firemen are now exhuming charred bodies from the ruins.