EXPLOSION WRECKS CITY

Taranaki Daily News, 13 February 1933, Page 7

EXPLOSION WRECKS CITY

DEATH ROLL OVER TWO HUNDRED GIANT GASOMETER HURLED ALOFT GRIEF-CRAZED SEARCH IN RUINS • • .. ‘ ■ . .' ■'■■■• ■ -By Telegraph-Press Assn.—Copyright- . Received 6.30 p.m. s London, February 11. STREETS were obliterated by the explosion of a gasometer. yesterday at Neunkirchen, Saar Valley, Germany. At least 221 people were killed, including whole families, and early estimates of the casualties placed the injured at over 1000. Neunkirchen, which yesterday was a town of 35,000 inhabitants all peaceful and happy, is to-day filled with crazy, grief-stricken people amid a spectacle of ruin only paralleled by a shell-torn city in war time. Even adjoining woods are stripped of their branches as if bombarded, and a dense pall of smoxe r;ises : from the still burning gasworks and neighbouring petrol Smoke fills the streets, Which are littered feet deep with debris in . which survivors are disconsolately seeking the dead, burrowing frantically in smouldering ruins, some heaps of which are still unapproachable owing to the fierce heat. Many °f the bodies recovered are unrecognisable, : but indications are that whole families were destroyed. Twenty-five bodies were recovered in one block of houses in a workmen’s colony alone.. Hundreds buried in neighbouring streets are mostly undiscovered.

VICTIMS BURIED IN RUINS

.blast heard sixty miles. EXCAVATORS’ EXPERIENCES DESTRUCTION OF RAILWAY Ree. 7.10 pan.-* ”' 1 London, Feb. 11. The explosion hurled 100 feet aloft the largest gasometer in the Saar Valley. It was 250 feet high and 140 feet in diameter,- with a capacity of 120,000 cubic feet, ihe explosion wrecked the neigh-bouring-workmen’s colony. The modern factories surrounding the scene were badly damaged. No window in the district was unbroken. Bodies were hurled across the streets. The nearest fifty houses were reduced to fragments. Women and children were buried in the ruins. The explosion destroyed the telegraph and telephone wires and strewed, the railway with wreckage, stopping trains and bombarding the town with flying fragments of metal, comparable to wartime bombardments.

The flames were visible for 30 miles and the . blast was heard for 60 miles. The entire gasworks, where 500 were employed by Roechling and Company, were. * roaring furnace, as were the ironworks, necessitating frenzied efforts by the district fire brigades. All the hospitals, doctors’ waiting rooms and surgeries. were crammed with the injured, who were hurried thither in motor-lorries. and ambulances. An extraordinary experience awaited excavators. They found a baby uninjured in a cradle with the parents dead alongside. A man who was released after hours of work went mad and attacked his rescuers. Police, firemen and thousands of volunteers are removing debris. At least a quarter of the town was destroyed. Saarbruecken Street, adjoining the gasworks, with a row of houses 300 yards long, was completely swept away. It is now a blazing heap concealing the victims. Among these were five families, one of which comprised five children. Already over sixty bodies have been recovered. Though experts say there is no fear of further explosion many citizens have .. fled. Injured people are scattered all over the town, many distracted people going to the hospital and from house to z house . searching' for missing friends. When the explosion occurred there were only 35,000 cubic feet in the gasometer; by Mondaiy there would normally have been 120,000. One woman when extricated gasped: "Eight ,of us were drinking coffee when the explosion occurred.” She died immediately. The mutilated remains of the other seven have been found since. The gasometer, 140 feet in diameter, was thrown half a mile over the town like an enormous shrapnel shell. The nearby railway station was submerged and miles of railway tracks were destroyed. This, coupled with havoc to the roads, makes the transport of supplies and removal of the bodies a herculean task. The police ordered the evacuation of the low-lying parts of the town owing to the danger of suffocation. There were heart-rending scenes as the police restrained men and women from searching for lost* relatives.

TERRIFIC EXPLOSION IN BAVARIA.

WORKMEN HAD LEFT IRONWORKS.

Rec, 6.30 p.m. Berlin, Feb. 11. Exactly 24 hours after the Neunkirchen disaster the gas plant at the Hammerau ironworks, Reichenhall, Bavaria, exploded with terrific force, shattering two gas generators 30 feet high and firing the workshops, which were destroyed. Fortunately workmen had departed and there were no casualties. ■

> DAMAGE OVER £300,000

WORKMAN’S HEROIC DEED

CATASTROPHE A MYSTERY GIGANTIC FLAMES IN SKY Rec. 7.30 p.m. London, Feb. IL The police chief says the lowest estimate'of the damage is £330,000. Hundreds of homeless are being fed and sheltered by fellow citizens. _ The hero of the disaster was a workman who, despite the peril •of instant death, rushed to the control house immediately the explosion occurred and turned off the emergency supplies of gas, which otherwise would have continued to feed the flames for 80 hours, also to spread deadly fumes over the’district. Hardly had the police cordoned the area when fresh explosions •' occurred owing to the ignition of adjacent barrels of petrol, which led to the explosion of the second gasometer. ■ ■■•■ Tragedy awaited the ambulance squad who rushed to ■ the scene when the petrol tanks, exploded. They were, completely wiped out by the subsequent gasometer explosion. People evacuated the streets and houses within a radius of 1000 yards, fearing gas poisoning. The clergy endeavoured to allay the panic, but many inhabitants fled. The cause of the catastrophe is a mystery.. Incendiarism and sabotage are both rumoured, but the police chief declares there is no evidence of either. One report attributes the disaster to a motor-car back-firing in the petrol yard. The gasometer was believed to be constructed on the safest possible principle, it being the wet . type in which the lower part of the container is plunged under water, never rising high enough to permit air to enter between the water and the container’s lower edge. Experts express the opinion that the recent earthquake might have upset the simple contrivance, . allowing the entrance of air, forming a highly explosive mixture. ? . The whole of Germany is mourning. Flags are half-mast and broadcasts of, light music have been cancelled. A public funeral is being arranged for the victims, who will be buried in a common grave. President von Hindenburg headed the list of donations for relief, which, are. now £5OOO. The Saar Commission has given £6OOO. M. Lebrun, President of France, has telegraphed France’s sympathy with the intimation that the French Government is contributing 100,000 francs (about £1000). This recalls that France was allotted £he Saar mines under the treaty. The catastrophe is the worst in Europe since the explosion of the ammonia tank at Oppau in 1921, which killed* 350. By midnight 50 bodies had been recovered, many terribly mutilated. Despairing people were wandering among the wrecked, darkened streets searching for relatives, distracted wives seeking their husbands, and children crying for their parents. The inhabitants are still panic-stricken although the danger of further explosions seems to be over. “After the explosion gigantic flames shot into the sky,” says an eye witness. “Panic seized the inhabitants, who imagined an earthquake had occurred. They rushed screaming into the streets. Sick people were helped out of their beds and rushed to other parts of the town. Every house in one street for a distance of 500 yards was destroyed. Fifteen simply disappeared. In another street ten collapsed simultaneously. The roofs of houses two miles away were lifted clean off. Doctors in many cases were forced to operate on the injured in the street, priests administering the last sacrament to the dying.” When the roof of a picture theatre collapsed three were killed and many injured. Only the under-carriage was left of a passing tramcar, in which several are believed to have been killed.