HURLED SEVENTY FEET.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 110, 9 April 1926, Page 10

HURLED SEVENTY FEET.

QUARRY EXPLOSION.

A QUEENSLAND TRAGEDY. SYDNEY, April 1. A quarry explosion, similar in most respects to the tragic Bankstown (N.fcJ.W.) occurrence- in which two men lost their lives recently, occurred this week at Nerang, Queensland. One man was killed outright, and four were seriously injured. The explosion occurred in a quarry 35 feet wide and about six and seven feet deep in various parts. One of the- men—George Giddy, contractor for the Queensland Mam Roads Board, sank his pick into some debris and the point struck an unexploded charge of gelignite. There was a ternric roar and the pit was enveloped in smoke. Of eight men in the pit at the time, three only escaped injury. A man named Marriott, who was just outside the quarry when the explosion ..occurred, thought he saw the limb of a tree hurtling past him, but it turned out to be Giddy's body. It was blown through the air over a tworail fence into an adjacent paddock, a distance of about 70 feet. The greater part of his clothes were torn off, while pieces were forced into his mutilated body. Alexander Duncan and Jack Buckley were seriously injured by flying pieces of rock. Buckley was injured about the head and face, his not;o being frightfully mutilated. He also sustained severe lacerations to the scalp and his body was badly bruised. Duncan's in juries consisted of a fractured right elbow, fractured ribs, lacerations of the body and face, and general bruises all over the body. Three fingers of his right hand wero so bodly broken that they had to bo amputated by a doctor. Two other men —Hoy Thrower and Thomas Keiver escaped with bruises and abrasions.