BURNT ALIVE AT A PICTURE SHOW.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1070, 8 March 1911, Page 5

BURNT ALIVE AT A PICTURE SHOW.

LOSS OF 120 LIVES. TERRIBLE DISASTER IN A RUSSIAN TOWN. HEARTRENDING SCENES. Oy Tckcrapli—Press AssoclaLlon-GoDyrtElit. (Rcc. March S : O.j a.m.) St. Petersburg, March 7. A terrible disa-ier has occurred at Bologoe, a small town aliout ISO miles southwest of ,St. P«l<:rs.l)iirs. During a kincmatograph entertainment a (iri! occurred, with the result tliat over a hundred persons lost their lives. The inhabitants of liologoe arc chiefly raiiwaynieii, but many peasants came in to see the Uinematograph slides dealing with the liberation of the serfs, and also to enjoy the last day of the carnival preceding Lent. The show was given in a wooden building, and of the three doors admitting to it two were closed and the other barred in order that only one person might be ndmitteil at a time. The windows were also closed with shutters. An explosion of benzine occurred, and in n few seconds the hall was a mass of

flames. Twenty-five persons, mostly men, retained their presence of mind anil escaped through the narrow passage. The rest

were burnt. A party of townsmen pluckily dashed into the building and made a desperate effort to save their wives and children, but in vain. Nearly all the rescuers perished in the fall of fho roof, which completed the holocaust. The firemen v.ero long in arriving, and their efforts were fruitless. They could only help to remove the charred beams and boards from the corpses, many of those being unrecognisable fragments which the peasants lifted oil to sleighs by candlelight and took to the mortuary. Heart -rending scenes were witnessed, and the parents were to bo seen with bleeding hands digging in the smouldering ruins in search of the bodies of their children.' Ninety corpses have been extricated, but it is believed that 120 perished.