FIRE ON CIRCUS TRAIN FOURTEEN PEOPLE KILLED.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21196, 29 November 1930, Page 13

FIRE ON CIRCUS TRAIN

FOURTEEN PEOPLE KILLED.

WILD ANIMALS RELEASED. \ (United Press Association.)

(By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.)

VANCOUVER, November 27. Fire aboard a circus train which was touring Mexico caused 14 deaths and released the, wild animals, terrifying the quiet countryside. The locomotive drawing the circus cars rammed a carload of gasolene, exploding it. Lions, bears, and elephants rac-ed through the quiet streets of Guadalupe. The elephants escaped into the forest, wrecking in their path. LIONS AND JAGUARS ESCAPE. MADDENED BY THE FLAMES. . MEXICO CITY, November 27. (Received Nov. 28, at' 8 p.m.) Fourteen bodies have been removed from the charred wreckage’of the circus train, which backed into a car loaded with petrol near Irapuato, and a minute later was a mass of flames. Eighteen more of the circus troupe of 60 members are in hospital, and most of them are so badly burned by the flaming petrol, which spread over their sleeping car, that their recovery* is doubtful. Meanwhile soldiers and civilians arc scouring the neighbourhood in search of two elephants, three lions, and two jaguars which escaped from the menagerie car. One of the maddened elephants lumbered through a. village five miles from Covarrubias this morning, giving the inhabitants the scare, of their lives. The scene at the wayside station where the train caught fire and the animals broke from their cages was described today by rescuers, who killed 'some of the animals before they made off into the surrounding wild country. Lions, frantically seeking to escape from the flames, dashed into one coach, so terrifying the passengers that some plunged through windows. Soldiers finally frightened off the maddened beasts.