THE DYNAMITE EXPLOSION IN NEW YORK.

Evening Star, Issue 11725, 7 April 1902, Page 3

THE DYNAMITE EXPLOSION IN NEW YORK.

The contractors, for the first underground road being built in New York have been engaged on the work for about two years, and necessarily employed large quantities of dynamite in cutting a passage through the rock. As the route going northward in Fourth avenue approaches the Grand Central station of the Vanderbilt reads at Forty-second street, the tunnel-diggers had had to avoid the existing short subway for tiMey cars in that avenue. Near the station were several large hotels. At the corner of Fourth avenue and Forty-first street is the Murray Hill Hotel, one of the finest in thi citv. Directly in front of it was a shaft leading to the tunnel, 40ft below; and near the shaft, placed upon upright limbers, was, a little cabin or shanty in which dynamite was kept. On Monday, January* 27, triers were nearly 5001b of the terrible explosive in that cabin. A lighted candle, fell from its fastening on the inner wall to the iloor, and set fire to some loose paper. The workman in charge made one futile effort to extinguish the fire, and then run for his life. It is almost impossible to describe the effect of the awful explosion that followed. Eight men were killed, and hundreds were injured. The shock and concussion wcro felt for a long distance. All the windows within « radius of three or four blocks were blown our. Whcro the .shanty had stood there was a great cavity. The Murray Hill Hotel at first appeared to be a wreck, but the walls had not been weakened. In a sink on the parlor floor lw-d been standing J. Roderick Robertson, a mining millionaire, of Nelson, British Columbia, managing director there of the British Columbia Goldfieids Company. His body was driven through a partition into a bathroom, from which it rebounded to a bed .in the fir.>t room, with its head completely severed. The interior of the rooms was almost incredibly wrecked. In the hotel cafe the man ut the cigar stand had his head cut off by flying glass. A man on the side, walk was blown 400 ft, and his dead body was a mass of broken bones. Tn the hotel wine cellar the wine from broken bottler was 2ft deep. Hundreds of persons were hurt by flying gku-y and splinters of wood. For two blocks around the buildings bad been shaken as by an earthquake. The Eye and Ear Hospital, opposite to the hotel, was so seriously injured that all it? inmates were at once removed. For two days the window openings in tlie Giand Central station, the neighboring hotels, and the numerous shops wore closed with muslin, for want of glass; and in the middle of an icy winter muslin windows make a cold interior. Timbers from the dynamite cabin were carried through the. air for six or seven, blocks, and some of them penetrated the roofs of houses when they fell. The repairs which must be made on account of this explosion will cost 500,000d01, and the contractors will suffer, because the accident was duo to gross carelessness and a violation of the rules concerning the storage of explosives.