TERRIFIC EXPLOSION ROOF OF BUILDING OPENS UP.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1914, Page 7

TERRIFIC EXPLOSION ROOF OF BUILDING OPENS UP.

SEVERE CONCUSSION. It was clear that the work of salvage could not go on much longer, as the heat was great and there was a danger of falling timber. Constable Mahoney, whose efforts had inspired all, saw the danger and announced that he would go in and get the boys out. He went inside. Less than a minute afterwards, while the constable was inside the shop with a number of other men, while several Were at work shifting materials across the street, while others were taking a breather from their work or merely looking on from the vacant section across the street, while the landlord of the hotel and a boarder were standing on thu edge of the verandah with the garden hose playing on the building, there came a tremendous ex plosion. Words fail to describe it. It was certainly heard in the still night at Lower Hntt and Petone, and is reported to have been heard by a railwayman at Kaiwarra. In the confines of the upper valley it roused everybody out of their beds. It was a deafening roar. Everybody who heard it agrees that the like was never heard before. It was the sound that impressed everybody. Few who were anywheie near the spot, can describe what the explosion looked like. Those in the immediate vicinity who escaped death or serious injury were knocked down by tho concussion and stunned. FORCE OF THE EXPLOSION. One man saw the roof open up like the petals of a flower, and then a spout of flamo shot- up into the air with an incredible roar. Tho concussion was sq great that every window; in the post office opposite, which recched the direct iorco of the explosion, was shattered. All the windows along t-*ie front of the upper* story of the Provincial lintel were smashed. The whole shop window of Lay's store across the road was blown in. Through all the front over a sector of about ninety degrees spurtlcd a deadly rain of flying debris, sheets cf iron, broken glass, big verandah posts, and heavy scantlings, and a host of minor fragments. The eido of tho Provincial Hotel next to the store wais knocked out of plumb, and several of its timbers smashed and dented by the deadly hail of debris. A window sash weight was hurled across the street and drove through an inch and a-half plank at the corner of Lay's etore. A scantling, five by four and over six feet long, struck a galvanised iron shed fifty yards away across the vacant section, and left its imprint all along the corrugations. Windows were broken nearly half-a-milc away. When one surveyed the scene of wreckage yesterday with the debris scattered round, tho only wonder wa<> [ that tho loas of life was not much greater.