OVER 100 DEAD

Grey River Argus, 15 December 1942, Page 4

OVER 100 DEAD

ANOTHER DANCE HALL FIRE 130 Sent to Hospital DISASTER IN NEWFOUNDLAND CAPITAL. I [Aust. & N.Z. Cable Assn.] iST. JOHNS (Newfoundland), Dec. 13 I Ninety-four bodies have been reI covered, and others are feared to be I dead after a fire which destroyed the Knights of Columbus Hostel, crowded with dancers. One hundred and thirty were sent to hospital. j Many servicemen were among the I victims. [ST. JOHNS (Newfoundland) Dec. 13. At least 104 died while 130 were 'admitted to hospital as the result of the fire which swept the Knights of Columbus hostel here. There were 500 servicemen and others in the hostel, , where they were enjoying a regular » Saturday night dance. The cause of the fire remains obscure. The flames raced through the wooden hostel structure vzith an incredible rapidity, ■ trapping the panic stricken dancers who were jammed. Dozens of people were crushed to death as screaming men and women blocked the exits, all fighting to reach safety. Rescue workers later found piles of bodies inside of all of the doorways in a manner similar to that in which bodies v/ere piled up inside the doorways at the Cocoanut Grove night club in Boston, U.S'.A., where a greater disaster occurred exactly a fortnight ago. The Government of Newfoundland has announced that there were some Canadian servicemen among the dead. The blaze started at eleven p.m. There was a fire station only two hundred yards away, but the building was a blazing pyre before the firemen arrived. The fire finally was brought under control at two a.m. Public halls were immediately opened to receive the dead and the injured, as the morgues and the hospitals became quickly overcrowdA steady procession of relatives and friends filed through grim improvised morgues seeking to identify the dead.