RUMANIAN POPULACE FURIOUS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 221, 15 June 1936, Page 9

RUMANIAN POPULACE FURIOUS

Collapse of Grandstand Takes Terrible Toll

FAULTY BUILDING WORK

ALLEGED

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received June 14, 6.30 p.m.) London. June 13. The "News Chronicle's” Bucharest correspondent says that the indignation caused by the collapse of the grandstand at the scout review has risen to a fury whidh is beating about the throne itself. Relatives have already been officially informed of the deaths of 368 persons, but it is positively known that no fewer than 420 were killed, besides 1)3 others with broken backs and 380 with amputated legs and arms.

The public has known the terrible resuits of tiie disaster from the beginning, but newspapers were allowed to print only an official communique statting that only three were killed. The suppression of the facts is interpreted as an attempt to shield those responsible for the catastrophe which, it is asserted, was caused by criminal negligence, by poor work and the use of defective material. Many of those killed belonged to distinguished families. x

One paper says: "This happened because the King is surrounded by liars and robbers.” Another says: “Rumania is a land without responsible Government, but nobody expects that any member of the Government will be punished and, since the grandstand builders were Jews, they will probably be made the scapegoats.”

The grandstand, a tiered building 60 feet in height, collapsed with a noise like a thunderclap when King Carol and Dr. Benes, President of Czechoslovakia, were reviewing Boy Scouts and Girl Guides at a display in honour of the sixth anniversary of King Carol's restoration. A cable dated June 8 said that 30 persons had been killed and 600 injured.