ANOTHER NEW YORK DISASTER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11535, 21 November 1900, Page 5

ANOTHER NEW YORK DISASTER.

FATAL EXPLOSION IN CHEMICAL

WORKS.

GREAT LOSS OF LIFE AND PROPERTY The San Francisco papers of the date on which the Alameda sailed contained reports of the disaster in Tarran's chemical works, New York, reported by cable. The San Francisco Chronicle has the following: —

The long list of fire horrors that have occurred in and. around the city of New York was added to on October 29 by a fire and explosion which shook the lower end of Manhattan Island like an earthquake, hurled a ; seven-storey building into the air, and set fire | to two blocks of buildings, with a loss of life that only the efforts of hundreds of men who were rushed to the work of digging away the ruins as soon as the fire was extinguished will reveal. The big building of Tarrant and Co., makers of chemical specialties, standing at the north-west corner of Greenwich and Warren Streets, and filled with chemicals, took fire in eome way that may never be known. One fire company had just arrived when a terrific explosion occurred and threw the entire engine crew down the stairway. _ The firemen, realising the danger of their position, rushed from the building to the street. The explosion had filled the street in front with a shower of falling glass and small debris, which ront the crowd which had gathered on the opposite sidewalks. Engineer Rocksbury and Fireman Brown wero injured by falling glass, as was another fireman belonging to the company. Captain Devanney\>f tho company ordered his crew back into the building again. They wero dragging the, line to the 'doorway for the second time when there came another explosion, more terrific than the first, and the whole crew was hurled across Green-wioh-slreet. Devanney was so badly injured that he was sent to a hospital. In the meantime the other engines that had responded to the alarm had collected, and the firemen were busy rescuing people from surrounding buildings. The second explosion occurred about five minutes after the first. From the accounts of witnesses the building seemed to leap into the air, and in a moment masses of brick wall, timbers, and stone were falling into the street. The force of the explosion tore away the walls of the big commission storehouses fronting on Washington-street, and caused them to collapse, falling all at once in a mass of timber, boxes, and barrels, from which the flames, which burst out from the Tarrant building like the belching of a cannon, broke forth. Across Warren-street to the opposite buildings the flames leaped, setting them afire at once, the work of the explosion demolishing windows and all wooden work about the houses. In a moment War-ren-street was choked with a mass of debris, and the whole place was aflame. The great explosion was followed by half-a-dozen more scarcely less intense and by a countless number of smaller ones. The explosion and fire together had now assumed the proportions of a great catastrophe, and it was thought that hundreds of lives had been lost. Throngs of people were running about in the noar ; by streets, many of them panicstrieken, fleeing from the fire. They mingled in the crowd that was rushing down from Broadway to see what had happened. Half-an-hour after the explosion the streets for blocks around the fire were crowded with fire apparatus and a spore of ambulances, while hundreds of policemen were being rushed from all the lower precincts of the city to form lines, and many priests from near-by parishes were going here and there in the smoke-obscured thoroughfares seeking for injured who might need their aid. From the burning buildings a column of smoke was rising high in the air, mingled with flames that could not be controlled by hundreds of streams thrown upon them. The second explosion carried destruction in every direction. That it did not cause wholesale loss of life was due to the face that almost ten minutes' warning came after the first cry of fire and fully five minutes occurred between the first and minor explosion. which warned everyone within hearing, and tho second one. The force of the explosion was distinctly felt in Wall-street, where the accompanying noises made people think that, an earthquake had happened on the lower East Side. In the vicinity of Trinity Church there was much alarm, and it was feared that the lofty spiro of the old edifice was about to topplo over. The air was full of scraps of paper and charred wood, and a postal card, badly scorched, and addressed to Tarrant, and Co., fell into the roadway in front of the Broad-street entrance of the Mills building. The atmosphere throughout the down-town district was surcharged with a strong odour as of acids. Tho roofs of the tall buildings wero soon crowded with spectators, and much anxiety was manifested. It is thought the dead will not exceed 50, and the property loss not over 2,000,000 dollars at tho outside. Never in the history of New York has there been an explosion which wrought such havoc, so far as mere property loss is concerned. The fir.i that followed the explosion and was with difficulty got under control late in the afternoon left a wide area of ruin, so hot that search for the dead was impossible. All that is known is that in the Tarrant building, as well as in all the others and in the street, there wero a number of peoplo, and that many of them are under the great mass ot debris that fills the street for over a block, is considered beyond question.