THE LONDON GAS EXPLOSION.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXII, Issue 2670, 22 December 1928, Page 5

THE LONDON GAS EXPLOSION.

SHOPKEEPERS' HEAVY LOSSES. A.N INFERNO OF FIRE. (Press Association.—Copyright.) (Received 10.45 a.m.) London, December 21. At High Holburn the shopkeepers in the disaster area had a heart-break-ing experience. A butcher with £4OO worth of Christmas turkeys is remaining open, "but there are no customers because the shop overlooks a huge cavern. The patients at the Royal Westminster Hospital are being fed with cold tinned foods •as fires are not-per-mitted.

Operations cannot be undertaken at the hospital as the water is cut off. An urgent operation, necessary to prevent a patient losing his sight, was carried out with the aid of an electric sterlizer.

A big section of High Holburn continued to be desolate. Five hundred police and many police were on duty all night. Many houses have been cofflpulsorily evacuated, as the flames continue their road through the everwidening fissures of the streets, making the region a miniature inferno o £ fires, which in many places are threatening the foundations of high buildings. Water is being pumped in to combat this peril.

An extraordinary gas explosion occurred in High Holborn at 8 o'clock on Thursday morning, when business men and women were coming into the city. Half a mile of roadway was torn up and kerbstones were lifted like feathers. Pedestrians were flung into the air. A horse was killed and a taxicab overturned. 'Manholes exploded like bombs and people were thrown out of bed. It was the worst explosion of its kind ever known in Britain.)