EXPLOSION AT NEUKIRSCEN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 13 February 1933, Page 5

EXPLOSION AT NEUKIRSCEN

FIFTY BODIES SO FAR RECOVERED DESTRUCTION OF HOUSES INHABITANTS PANIC-STRICKEN (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, Iltli February. By midnight fifty bodies had been recovered following the explosion of a gasometer at Neukirsehen. Many were terribly mutilated. Resellers are still finding dead and injured. Hundreds of despairing people are wandering among the wrecked darkened streets searching for relatives. Distracted wives are seeking husbands and children are crying for their parents. The inhabitants are still panicstricken, although the danger of further explosions seems to be over. The “Daily Mail’s” Berlin correspondent gives ail account by an eye-witness of the Neukirsehen explosion, “After the explosion gigantic flames shot into the skv. Panic seized the inhabitants who imagined an earthquake had occured and rushed into the streets, screaming. Sick people were helped out of their beds and rushed to other parts of the town. Every house in one street for a distance of 500 yards was destroyed. .Fifteen simply disappeared. In another street ten collapsed simultaneously. The roofs of houses two miles away were lifted clean off. Doctors in many cases were forced to operate on injured in the street. Priests were administering the last sacrament to the dying.” When the roof of a picture theatre collapsed three were killed and many injured. Only the undercarriage was left of a passing tramcar, in which several are believed to have been killed. APPALLING SPECTACLE OF RUIN LIKE SHELL-TORN CITY LONDON, 11th February. Neukirsehen, which yesterday was a town of 35,000 inhabitants, all peaceful and happy, is to-day filled with crazy, grief-striken people, amidst a spectacle of ruin only paralleled by a shell-torn city in war time. Even the adjoining woods are stripped of their branches as if bombarded, and a dense pall of smoke rises from the still burning gasworks and neighbouring petrol tanks. Smoke fills the streets, which are littered feet deep with debris, in which survivors are disconsolately seeking the dead, burrowing frantically in the smouldering ruins, some heaps of which are still unapproachable owing to the fierce heat. Many bodies recovered are unrecognisable, but the indications are that whole families were destroyed. Twentyfive were recovered in one block of houses in the workmen’s colony alone. Hundreds buried in neighbouring streets are mostly undiscovered. . An extraordinary experience awaited the excavators. They found a baby uninjured in a cradle, the parents being dead alongside. : .. ,• . ■' A man who jifter/hburs of work went mad'and attacked his rescuers. . /j •'rv"" ■ Police, firemen and thousands of volunteers are removing debris. At least a quarter of the town is destroyed. Saarbrucken street, adjoining the gasworks with a row of house's 300. yards long, was completely swept away .and the houses are now mere blazing heaps, concealing the victims. Among these were five families, one of which comprised five l children. Though experts say there is no fear of a further explosion, many citizens have fled. Injured people are scattered all over the town. Manv of the distracted are going to the hospital and from house to house searching for missing friends. When the explosion occurred there were only* 35,000 cubic metres in the gasometer. By Monday there would normally have been 120,000. LATER DETAILS DEATHS ESTIMATED AT 221 LONDON, 11th February. Later estimates state that there are at least 221 dead, including whole streets of families. One woman extricated gasped: “Eight of us were drinking coffee when the explosion occurred.” She died immediately. The mutilated remains of the other-seven have since been found. The gasometer, which was similar to one at Wollestoncraft, Sydney, being 140 feet in diameter, was thrown half a mile over the town like an enormous shrapnel shell. The nearby railway station was submerged, and miles of railway tracks were destroyed. This, coupled with the havoc to the roads, makes the transport of supplies and the removal of the bodies a herculean task. The police evacuated the low-lying parts of the town owing to the danger of suffocation. There were heartrending scenes as the police restrained men and women from searching for lost relatives. HERO OF DISASTER t EMERGENCY SUPPLIES TURNED OFF LONDON, 11th February. The police chief says that the lowest estimate of the damage is £330,000. Hundreds of homeless are being fed and sheltered by fellow citizens. 'The hero of the disaster was a workman, who despite the peril of instant death, rushed to the control house immediately the explosion occurred and turned off the emergency supplies of gas, which otherwise would have continued to feed the flames for 80 hours, and also spread deadly fumes over the district. Tragedy awaited the ambulance srpiad • who rushed to the scene when petrol tanks exploded, and they were completely wiired out by a subsequent gasometer explosion. The cause of the catastrophe is a mystery. Incendiarism and sabotage are both rumoured, but the police chief declares there is no evidence of this. One report attributes the disaster to a motor car backfiring in the petrol yard. The gasometer was believed to be constructed on the safest possible principle, being of the wet type, in which the lower part of the container is plunged under water, never rising high enough to permit air to enter between the water and (lie container’s lower edge. Experts express the opinion that a recent earthquake might have upset the simple contrivance, allowing the entrance of air, forming a highly explosive mixture. The whole of Germany is in mourning, flags being at half-mast. .Broadcasts

of light music, are cancelled. A public funeral is being arranged for the victims, who will be buried in a common grave. President Hindenburg headed donations for relief, which are now £5.000, The Saar Commission have given £6OOO. M. le Brun, President of France, telegraphed France’s sympathy, with an intimation that the French Government was contributing 100,000 francs, recalling that France was allotted the Saar mines under the Treaty. The catastrophe is the worst in Europe since, the explosion of an ammonia tank at Oppau in 1.521 which killed 350. CLEARING THE STRICKEN AREA TEARFUL GROUPS AT BARRIERS (Received 13th February, noon) LONDON. 12th February. The bodies of 20 men, 25 women and 12 children lie in the mortuaries of four Neukirsehen hospitals awaiting Tuesday s obsequies in the presence of Herr von Papon. Tile deathroll will he swelled when the Saarbrueken Stvasse is _ cleared. Tearful groups cluster the harriers which prevent unauthorised entry to the devastated areas, where investigation is temporarily, .suspended!, (since •further rescues are’ hopeless though grieving women are searching in nightmare fashion tho ruins of the former homes of 800 people l whence protrude fragments of furniture and broken toys. Several families are repairing the less damaged dwellings with the object of resuming domicile. Some of those rushing from the houses after the first explosion were killed or mutilated by the second one. A woman s legs were blown off -and a motor car was hurled through tho air many yards, the occupant being killed. Ten of the reduced staff of twenty, -t\vo working the by-product plant lost their lives. _ . The wreckage is still burning. The furnaces of the steelworks are little damaged and they will not closed, but reconstruction of the entire plant, will occupy a year, rendering many wovkless. Tlie removal of debris alone will take weeks ■ ’ A priest endeavouring to deliver a sermon in a crowded church broke down and was unable to preach. FUNERAL PYRE SAAR’S MOST MODERN PLANT (‘‘Times” Cables! (Received 13th February, 1.10 p.m.) LONDON, 12th. February. The spectral light of a full moon at Neukircli is palled by a fierce red flare still illuminating the upper portion of the town. It is the funeral pyre ot the most modem industrial plant in theSaar. In the midst lies the collapsed framework of the gasometer like a huge spider’s web. Houses immediately opposite have been blasted into their original elements, and shattered stumps of trees flank roadways littered with wreckages and the carcases of pigs. The explosion left a huge crater filled with buckled plates and twisted girders, near which a blazing benzol plant threatens to collapse on. subterranean benzol tanks on which firemen are constantly playing streams of Milter. Whole families separated in the panic, flight are seeking to reunite themselves, not knowing whether their kindred survive. ANOTHEREXPLOSION GAS PLANT AT' IRONWORKS - : BERLIN, 11th February. Exactly twenty-four hours after 'the Neukirsehen explosion, the gas plant at Hamnrerau ironworks, Reichenhall, Bavaria, exploded with terrific -force, shattering two gas generators thirty, feet, high, and firing the workshops, which, were destroyed. Fortunately the workmen had departed and there lyere no casualties >