FIFTEEN DEAD

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 7 January 1928, Page 5

FIFTEEN DEAD

IN DISASTROUS EXPLOSION.

DANGEROUS RESCUE WORK. A TRAGEDY IN BERLIN. BY CABLE —PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYBICIIT BERLIN, Jan. 5. The city house explosion, reported yesterday, came without warning. Flames shot up 20 feet and in a moment the sleepers' on various flooi s were engulfed, beds and ail, in 30 feet of debris on thp ground level. Twelve dead have already been recovered and at least four are still buried. The search continues w.ih the aid of searchlights. Twenty are seriously injured. It is a miracle that anyone escaped, as some masses of debris were hi :led a quarter of a mile. The rec.mei was a task ef extreme danger, at, ciuniting masonry was continualy crashing down. The police and firemen ware very phuky and several were injured. The building was a big concrete tenement occupied, bv 99 persons liNong'iig to 28 families. Just before the catastrophe 30 guests, who had been ip;.’ rymalcing at a birthday party, left the. building, but the host and hostess vena killed. A tiny dog was heard whining in the darkness and firemen isawied through a heavy beam and saved the dog. Their acetylene lamps revealed the dog’s master hanging, head downwards among the bricks and mortar whence he had fallen from the_ upper floor. He asked the firemen first to extricate his wife. but the fir-men found sbe was dead.

A later message states that the lai-irt death roll places the casuaties at lo dead and one missing-