AN APPALLING DISASTER.

Colonist, Volume XXXV, Issue 7265, 9 March 1892, Page 4

AN APPALLING DISASTER.

ITJRE AT A HOSPITAI/V Indianopolis, January 22. An appalling disaster occurred here last night. Soon after midnight flames were, observed issuing from the National Surgical Institute —an establishment renowned throughout the United States for the treatment of patients suffering from maladies and diseases of ali kinds. ■}■. L A scene of the wildest confusion immedi .ately arose. The pat ents in the infants' and mothers' wards, beneath which the fire broke

out, were roused hastily by the attendants, who then hurried to the remaining seotions' of the building to warn the other inmates. - The panio stricken oreatarbs, or those of them whose ailments permitted them to leave their beds, rushed to the windows, and. implored the crowd, whioh asaembled quickly below, to save them from the hotrib'e death with, which they were threatened. • The polioe and fire brigade were soon on the spot; but the flames had already got a firm hold pf the building. .'■; '. ■ Nnmbers of willing hands, how* ever, aided the officials; and the firemen Boon raised a number ollaflders and escapes,' and mounting bravely to the windows, succeeded in rescuing a large number of those within. ° So sudden was the outbreak that, most of those rescued were in their night clothes; though some had- hastily snatched the blankets fronrtheir bed 1 and wrapped them round themselves as some protection against ther bitter^ weather. Accommodation was soon found for the rescued patients in neigh-' boring buildings, where cots were erected, andi the poor oreatures made as "comfortable as possible. ■•'.'■'. ■ Stretched on improvised beds and on tables : were many little children, moaning, crying, and coughing, their- throats rasped from inhaling the blinding smoke. '• Please, sir, . don't touch my leg*; it would -almost kill. me if you do,"; pleaded a little girl whose bandaged feet: protruded over the edge of the table.:, .-. „v.;, „■-:. . !-••■. „ William Kimbalt. a young man with both his legs crippled from the knees downward, and with his head bent on one side owing to a distorted shoulder^ joint, said :—" While asleep: on the 1 fourth floor of the building I was awakened; by a feeling of suffooation. The room was full of smoke. I rolled off the bed, but could not move about on aodounf of the Burgioal bandages in which I was strapped; so I took them off and lay curled on my side. I felt so hot that I thought I was going to die. I called out as loud as I oould, and suddenly the door opened with a crash, and a big colored man barat in and fell over me. He quickly regained his feet, however, and lifting me cp in hia arms, car. ried me downstairs, and^J&onght me here. God knows how tnanhfal I r am ! " . . Oae of themost -distressing qasss is that of Ethel PJait, a. little girl aged eight years., She was found in her bed on the third floor, in a half -suffocated state, and 'utterly helpless owing to a spinal complaint from which she suffered. The fireman who found hex, after wrapping her in a blanket, carried her down to the next floor through the dense smoke and flames to a window, and threw her out. She was caught by the crowd below, but her leg had been broken .in the fall, and she was carried to a neighboring house in awful agony, screaming and crying for her mother. There were many other thrilling escapes. Mrs Batton, one of the lady ptiysioians, is missing. She was last Been in one, ot the rooms tending a sick boy. The feet of one male patient were so badly burned that the ' flesh burst open, and the musoles were exposed to view. He was taken to the hospital in a most critical state. In the course of the forenoon 19 bodies were recovered from the ruins;