U.S THEATRE DISASTER.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17392, 1 March 1922, Page 11

U.S THEATRE DISASTER.

REMINDER OF GREAT WAR. EYE-WITNESS DESCRIBES SCENE. (TROM OUB OWN OQBRESro.NDENT.) SAN FRANCISCO, February 1. Amplification of the scanty cable details eent to the Antipodes of the Washington theatre disaster will indicate that the* cataclysm was the most terrible in the Capital's history. No description will do justice to the awlulness * of tho Knickerbocker Theatre tragedy. # ln loss of life the world's record of cataftrophes contains many of greater .magnitude; few, . except those wrought by the Great War, ever brought death so swiftly or merei'cssly as it was dealt to the men, women, and children caught that fateful Saturday night like "rats in a trap, of masonry and ice. To those at the scene of carnage through the long vigil while the almost hopeless work of rescue proceeded, its ghastly resemblance to war havoc in France or .Belgium at once forced itself to the memory. Could poor Cbauncey Brainerd, newspaperman, before the life ot him was crushed out, have surveyed the vista of his own tomb, his mind instinctively would have travelled hack to the devastated France he saw in 1918. A gaping shell crater would have staggered his gaze. As he looked down trom the roofless heights of the demolished theatre into the chaotic debris of the death pit, one saw a piece of the shattered Cloth Hall of Ypres. The crumbled rums ot Arras Cathedra] were conjured up.. London >ouses in smithereens from German air-bombs flitted aero* the recollection. But the most vivid picture of all, perhaps, was the wrecked-Chapel of St. Germain in Paris Good Fridav of wartime when a 'Big Bertha," long-rane/e messenger of Kultm\ shelled almost, as many souls into eternity as were entombed in Washington on the last Saturday night of this January. . The miracle, as ono envisaged the re- j mains of tho Knickerbocker Theatre, ; was that anybody ever would emerge alive from beneath that crush and chaos. Human Heroism. Survivors sufficiently recovered of their escapes recounted heartrending experiences in which there-was ahne b l end of human heroism mixed with sheer physical and mental anguish. One eve-wiW told of a rliaracteri.R ho episode in which a 19-year-old girl, jusV released from beneath chunks of concrete which had held her pinioned ior two hours, was brought out on a stretcher. Her hair was tousled, her clothes awrv\ but her flushed face was without a'scratch. She must have undergone supremo torture, yet she was smiling and almost laurhmff. it was the mirth of hysteria undoubtedly, but whatever it was, she was game as a Spartan mother. As Bed Cross helpers were huddling her into a blanket, "there's nothing wrong with me, she almost chuckled. , r (h There wero many who came tortn from the death nit like that—apparently unhurt, half-suffocated, lacerated —but unafraid and uncomplaining, lil*e tho womon tn Britain during tho German nir raids. This c'irl, who would not wince, coaxed n tear from si heprimed fireman. "It takes the women folk to suffer," was his pungent tribute to her sex. The labour of rescue was liironiparablv rlifficu.'t. The standing wal hj, unrooted as' clean as if a„ giant's knit© had just cut, the top off-and left no restive of it, enveloped a wild jumble of concrete, twisted steel, tangled railings boulders of snow, and .indiscriminate 'tangles of- wood and irmr that a few moments previously were the tiunishiiigs of a playhouse de luxe Upon roughly half of the victims only, tho roof- with its deadly crust of snow, had fallen. Upon the rest being those with seats! beneath the 'balcony, not only the roof, but the balcony, with its extra weight of human beings piled down. ■; Horrible Spectacle. There this were two la^\°, f :??„1 as if in a cake,. Victims caught in the balcoW were impounded between the collapsing roof and the masonry of the balcony, and there were hurled headlong upon the heads of another stratum of victims on the main floor. The death roll was heaviest in those parts of the house beneath the balcony, which extended well toward the middle of the orchestra, seats. In those parts, too, 'rescuing operations were cowespondthe trapped audience wen excruciating. The screams of the wohten and children whoed. into the street, amid the frantic cries o "tionß men helpless to succour either them,ol themselves. Escape for anyone was pSically impossible. Jhe softness with which P«^\ w Tf inmost the debris was such that in most cases Soir location could be detected only by ther wails or .faint cries for rescue. K Hen tho actual task of getting at them "was ono of the utmost dittC Vho firemen, police, and soldiers hurried to the scene but found themselves hopelessly unequipped with the propel kind of tools- Aoetylme torches had to be sent for, aVI that involved great, delay. The delays meant death to cwiV who might otherwise;have been saved. Bodies dead and living were brought forth throughout the night at 'tediously long intervals, so laborious was tho work of salvaging the human wrockage. As tho catastrophe ltselt was one of the totally unlooked for sort tho most willing of rescuing.hands were caught tragically unprepared ior tnedutv thev yearned to render. The night from every standpoint was heartbreaking. The anxiety and an, guish of parentsWid brothers and sisters waiting tor news of kith and kin was the most saddening aspect ot all. Thev stood in the streets and shivered through the night, hoping against hope for comforting tidings or visible evidence that their own at least had been spared. Aristocratic Show-house. The Knickerbocker was Washington's most aristocratic showhouse. It was in the centre of the ultra-fashionable north-west residential section with the capital's richest homes and diplomatic establishments in tho immediate! neighbourhood. Tho theatre was erected four or h\> years ago when society and fashion,- following the lead of the "common herd," took perforce to thejmoviesOn Monday mornings the Knickerbocker, during the autumn and winter, housed the most exclusive gatherings of women folk in Washington—looo to 1200 who went to hear Janet Richards's "Current Events" talks. The house was usually full on those occasions, when- wives of Cabinet Senators, representatives, and other elite womon comprised the audience. On this tateful Saturday night, by 1 the cue provident mercy of_ an otherwise calamitous occasion, the blizzard kept the Knickerbocker's ordinary night crowd at home. Instead of the 1000 or 1200 usually there for the Saturday comedy, only 200 or 300,, more or less, went for the night's tragedy. Debris and Death. Beneath the dead weight' of twentyfour inches of snow, accumulated during the whole of the preceding night and day, the ceiling cf th e theatre crumpled like an eggshell in the grip of n giant. The break seemed to start J from the centre. Then came a general crash from every direction, carrying 1 every fragment of ihe roof so completely that nothing bift the starlit Bky'waa

to gape down on the resultant mass of debris and death. All "was the work of seconds, destruction was wrought, so people nearby recorded, with the terrorising suddenness and many of the accompaniments of an earthquake. There was an explosive roar, a quivering of the ground, a shaking of houses,, and rattling of windows, then deadly silence. The corner at which the_ Knickerbocker stood is ordinarily a live centre of traffic- On ,this fateful Saturday night, owing to the inclement weather, it was comparatively deserted. Thus it came that few were available for immediate rescue work. Those at hand rendered Trojan service. Army, navy, police, fire department, hospitals, and citizens generally from all parts of I Washington cleared for action instantly the alarm was sent out. From conference headquarters the guard' of the [ marines was hurried to the scene. I Walter Heed Hospital rushed a fleet of ambulances, staffed by dozens of nurses, njrgeons and strctchor-boarers. I Polic<\ firemen and plain clothes detectives ablv marshaled by Inspector Grant and Captain, Doyle, jumped into the dfbns and wotked like benvers at the inextricable ruins. Bodies began to be uncovered at the end of an hour. Pome were bodies devoid of life, others the bodies of dvinc in whom life flickered only while they were being transported hi ambulances around the corner to the' First Church of Christ, Scientist, | which became an emergency hospital. irpnv taken from the rums just ajt.vo had passed into the Hcyoiid by the time j tender bands deposed them in the | church. Mnnv bodies miraculouslv bore no traces of injury, but were suffen#: in reality from agonising internal 'injuries. . ■ Orphaned EabeS • Two tinv babies were discovered in the Finns at 4 o'clock on the Sunday morning and both were alive and almost unhurt. One was sound asleep and the other gureling its joy at escape: Thenhands were frost-bitten. Their parents were said to be dead.' Perhaps the most henrt-remlins experience of ill the injured was that of Grant Knnston, a. nine-year-old boy. He jarrived at the church, his head covered in bandages, to find he was tlw only one left of a familv of five. The tears came with a little cry of anguish as.He identified +he horribly lorn bodies of his | mother and two sisters. Fifteen nun- j ates before, Oscar Kim.tor;, lus father, had died in a hospital. | Albert Buehler of the Portner Apartments, ono of tin men caught in tho ■ wreckage, watched rescuers■ save otheis for three hours before he permitted them to turn their efforts to him Some of the others were more badly hurt than Buehler, lie told the rescuers But he died •inconiplnining or. the operating table in the church a little later , A - younger hero was Gordon Hill, sixieen 'years. He helped pull a, small girl to safelv. "J had never seen her before and didn't know who she was," ho Bind. "I didn't know whit was happenuig: it came all of a sudden. First, .t was all dark, tut I began to crawl and pretty roon I couid k<e the sky." '■ W. H. Morris, of Buck Kftnnon,. believed to be the last man to leave tho theatre before the roof, craved down on tho orchestra heats, ga\e this eye-wit-ness story of what happened: "The last thing I remember seeing was the baton of the orchestral leader. 1 heard a. cracking oyerheacl. I had worked forty years in and I knew what that meant. It Founded exactly 10 me as though the'state of .he mine roof was .coming down. Tho thought flashed nvror,i my minjl. I can beat'that to the door,' and although I was about halfwav across the huge exit, T did. T. am 03 yea-'s old, bui T am a pretty good sprinter yet. .Tush as I got to the door, the gale of wind, paused by the falling roof blew me through the door into, the street."