SAAR DISASTER

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1933, Page 7

SAAR DISASTER

HAVOC OF EXPLOSIONS DEATH ROLL QUICKLY GROWS FIRES CONSUME WRECKAGE MANY BURIED IN DEBRIS . EXTENSIVE PLANT RUINED By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. London, Feb. 12. The bodies of 20 men, 25 women and 12 children, victims of the gasometer explosion, lie in the mortuaries of four Neunkerchen hospitals awaiting . Tuesday’s obsequies in the presence of Herr von Papen, Vice-Chancellor. The deathroll will be swelled when Saarbrucken Strasse are cleared. Tearful groups cluster at barriers, which prevent unauthorised entry to the devastated areas where the investigation has, been temporarily suspended, since further rescues are hopeless. Nevertheless grieving women are searching in nightmare fashion the former homes of 800 people, whence protrude fragments of furniture and broken toys. Several families are repairing damaged dwellings with the object of resuming domicile. Some of those reaching their houses after the first explosion were killed or mutilitated by the second one. A woman’s legs were blown off. A motorcar was hurled through the air many yards and the occupant was killed. Ten of a reduced staff of 22 working a byproduct plant lost their lives. The wreckage is still burning. The furnaces of the steel works were little damaged and will not be closed, but reconstruction of the entire plant will occupy a year, rendering many workless. The removal of the debris alone will take weeks. A priest when endeavouring to deliver a sermon in a crowded church broke down and was unable to preach. In the spectral light of the full moon Neunkerchen is palled by a fierce red flare still illuminating the upper portion of the town. It is the funeral pyre of the most modern industrial plant in the Saar Valley. In its midst lies the collapsed framework of the gasometer like a huge spider’s web. The houses immediately opposite were blasted into their original elements. Shattered stumps of trees flank the roadways, which are littered with wreckage and the carcases of pigs. • The explosion left a huge crater filled with buckled plates and twisted girders, near which a blazing benzol plant threatens to collapse on subterranean benzol tanks on which the firemen are constantly playing streams of water.. Whole families, separated in the panic of the flight, are seeking to reunite themselves, unaware whether their kindred still survive.