PANIC IN A “TUBE”

Evening Star, Issue 22085, 19 July 1935, Page 4

PANIC IN A “TUBE”

PEOPLE OVERCOME BY SMOKE More than 400 firemen and 45 engines fought desperately for eight hours recently to subdue one of the worst fires in the recent history of New York City. About 150 of the firemen were overcome by smoke, while 125 men, women, and children passengers in tube trains had to be treated by ambulance do«tors. The fire started about 1 p.m. in a large warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront. Heavy smoke, generated by piles of blazing rubber and paper with which the storehouse was filled, soon penetrated into the under-river tube, running to New York, and thick yellow fumes sucked in by the ventilating fans ; filled the carriages and caused a minor panic among the passengers. The signal lights vanished in the murk, and drivers had to slow the trains to a crawl as they vainly tried to pierce the thick gloom with eves streaming from the effects of smoko. Terrified passengers fought for the exits, and when the trains finally reached Wall street, the end of the tunnel, dozens had to be treated by doctors hastily summoned to emergency first-aid stations on the cavoment.

Miss Betty Quarante, one of the victims, gave a graphic account of the scene. She said: “I was in a ‘tube’ train when the smoke began billowing in. I began tearing at ray coat and gasping, while others near me started to scream —children the loudest of all. “ I was really panic-stricken. The train became so black with smoke that I could not see people sitting beside me,”

Firemen struggling _ with the blaze went down with alarming rapidity, and fumes even penetrated the gasmasks which many of them were wearing. Others were injured by hoses bursting under the tremendous pressure from the water mains.

So fierce were the flames that men holding the hoses at a distance of 25ft —the nearest they could get—had to lie flat and shield themselves the best way they could behind the curving rim of ‘their helmets.