GREAT FIRE IN BOSTON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9193, 6 May 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

GREAT FIRE IN BOSTON.

APPALLING SCENES. MEN AND WOMEN MAD WITH FEAR. Boston*, March 10.—One of the moat destructive fires in the history of Boston broke out at four o'clock this afternoon, ami before it was gob under control, three hours later, it had burned over a quarter of a equre, reducing to ashes several magnificent new buildings recently completed on the territory burned over less than three and a-half years ago. It consumed property valued by a conservative estimate at 4,500,000d01., and was attended by scenes of panic and distress never before equalled here It destroyed several, perhaps many, human lives and mangled or maimed at least thirty persons, some of whom will die of their injuries. The flames broke out in the top department ef Horace Hartridge and Co., who occupied the fifth and six floors of a sevenstorey building, at the corner of Essex and Lincoln Streets, owned by F. L. Ames. The cause is at present unknown, but the fire is described by those nearest it as resembling the bursting of a huge firecracker. The flames spread with frightful rapidity, and in a very few momenta the entire building was burning. There wen» many employees at work at the time, and the ether floors of the building were occupied by human beings. The usual avenuiss of escape were at once cut off, and then began a scramble for life which sickened the beholders. The panic-stricken inmates fled to the windows and roofs, and some escaped by sliding down the telegraph poles and others by leaping into blankets. Several jumped to the pavement, a distance of six or eight stories, and were terribly mangled, and others, how many cannot now be told, fell back into the cauldron of flames or were overcome by the dense smoke which suffocated all who did not speedily escape. It would be impossible to narrate all the exciting scenes attending the conflagration. A fireman, in relating the story of the flames, said that he went to the second storey of the Ames building and found a struggling mass of men and women trying to throw themselves out of the windows. He beat them back and, opening the window, took them one at a time, dropping them into the net below. He succeeded in dropping thirty, and says there was as many more there who never came out of the building alive. There were many intensely exciting scenes attending the fire, but the one which attracted the most attention, perhaps, was that of a man appearing in the eighth storey of the Burrill building when the fire was at its height, seizing a large insulated cable and proceeding across to the opposite building, band over hand, amid the most intense and breathless suspense on the part of the spectators. He soon weakened, however, and then threw both legs over the cable and thus worked bis way tediously to a haven of refuge, while life-saving nets were held under him by the police and firemen, and the spectators shouted to the imperilled man to drop. He reached a point midway between the two buildings, and as the smoke cleared away his white face was recognised as that of Chief John Pagan, out for the first time since - suffering from a fracture of the collarbone. A pquad of men quickly mounted the building for which he was heading, and loosening the cable gradually lowered It till the hook and ladder men rescued the chief and carried him to a place of safety. One fireman saw four men and women clinging to the stonework six stories up. It was impossible to reach them, and one by one they dropped, striking with a sickening thud on the frozen ground. Eich of them was unconscious when reached, and from the nature of the fall must have broken every bone in their bodies. Another fireman who assisted in removing the people who jumped from the burning building told of a girl jumping from a third storey window and striking® telegraph wire, which cut her throat. In another instance he held a blanket into which a number of women jumped, all of whom were more or less seriously injured. In a third place he saw some thirty people jump from windows in the rear of Essex-street. The life net broke their fall, but all were unconscious when taken out, and most of them were undoubtedly injured. He says that the windows of the third floor from which they jumped were a struggling mass of people, and he thinks that many lell back into the flames.