LIKE AN EARTHQUAKE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 12411, 22 March 1911, Page 5

LIKE AN EARTHQUAKE.

FEARFUL EXPLOSION

EFFECTS FELT lOp MILES AWAY",

. . CHICAGO,, March 14. There was widespread panic throughout tho city and. suburbs on Thursday, evening, „ About • 8.30, o'clock many , pi the buildings wer» v shaken, and -.windows broken, and people rushed „ front the theatre^ . and, . hotels . •. thinking th'af an earthquake; -was m, progress, , Sorne of the "skyscraper^" .^were 4ciuasy ; rocking. It was discovered afterwards thatj one of the most disastrous explosions m the annals of, tJnited. States history, had Ayrecked the Dupont Powder:,, Company's huge Avorks some distance ; frpm ,£h© city. The .entire plant covered .19 acres, and there Avas quite,. a village at the place where the Avorkmen liyed. .. Jn , the stores were 9000 kegs of finished] and 25,000 kegs of unfinished poAvder;. also 150 tons of'' finished and 130 tons of unfinished dynamite. All this went to swell the smash. ■ Hundreds of houses Avero rased to the ground' 'in a moipent, and buildings ten miles away were (damaged, while glass 1 windows a hundred miles away were broken. Of the 700 inhabitants of the village 300 Avere injured, hut owing to tho fact that the factory . was temporarily closed there Avere only one ,or two fatalities. -Four explosions , m, separate magazines folloAV* ed the first iru_jich rapid succession that they seemed bat one great explosion. Hundreds of horses and cattle were killed, and many of them hurled m pieces through stable walls. : ,