The Star. THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 1898.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6136, 24 March 1898, Page 2

The Star. THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 1898.

TEEEIBLE CATASTEOPHE AT NEWCASTLE. AWFUL EXPLOSIOX. A MAD RACE OF TERROR, SCENE FROM THE INFERNO. [From Our Correspondent."] LONDON, Feb. 12. Newcastle has been the scene of a tremendous conflagration, which resulted disastrously for the large crowd of spectators who had collected to watch tho blaze. About three in the afternoon the oil refinery of Messrs Mawson and Clarke, at Walkergate, an eastern suburb of Newcastle, caught fire from an overflow from a resin tank, and soon hundreds of gallons were in flames. The works stand by the aide of the North-eastern Railway, and thousands of people gathered by the railway line to see the burning building glowing like a furnace, and the rollinoclouds of black smoke blown from it by a westerly breeze. " There was a full hundred and fifty yards of flame ; the place was like a long burning pit; and silhouetted against the clear, fierce blaze weie thousands of eager spectators crushing against each other." About five o'clock a tank elevated a considerable height from the ground on brick walls, and containing sixteen tons of creosote, caught fire The flames leapt high into the sky and illuminated the country for miles around, trradually the sides of the tank bulged outwards, and then, with a tremendous report, THE WHOLE STRUCTURE EXPLODED. Jnve or six tanks were dashed to the ground an iron ladder was hurled across the railway a distance of forty yards and killed a man instantly, bricks and fragments of red hot metal were scattered in ? i I v!T' aQd the skew* of burning ScS'S across the «a™y line > and fipw T? the P aai c-stricken onlookers in a teSeta ge ' , A - stam P ede followed ' the over and Pe f° Pl6 ? ed blindly, tumbling iu thefr 1 t^PKnif on one another Lburninl™ P, raess t0 es °ape the hail of i burning metal and the flood of naming oil.

The agonising terror of the scene is vividly described by Mr P. S. Ogilvie, an artist, in the Newcastle Leader :—" Much of the ground between the fire and the main road was a wilderness of barrels. It was also very wet and slippery, and as they fled the spectators fell over each other in heaps, •with screams and shrieks and agonised cries. The scene at this point became indescribable. It was a flight for life, A MAD RACE AND TUMtJM' in which feelings of pity and consideration for others were in too many cases buried deep under vague terror of the consequences of the explosion. The sight was heartrending, in whichever direction the glance travelled, bruised faces that had been trampled into the black mud ; pitiable crushed hands feeling about for something to grasp at; women, children and men, helpless, aimless, struggling and writhing in terrified and injured heaps. In one heap there must have been forty or fifty struggling people. •It was like a football scrimmage multiplied by four, but with women and children unfortunately included.' Those who were flying from the explosion simply rushed on and fell, one over another, until the first sprawling unfortunate figure was buried in a writhing heap. It was like A SCENE PROM THE ' INFERNO,' with every dreadful accompaniment of wreathing flames." Those whose clothes had caught fire rushed hither and thither, shrieking, or rolled writhing on the ground to extinguish the flames. The firemen turned their hose from the building to the human torches, while on all sides doctors, students and railway men rushed to succour the sufferers, to bring them under cover, and to dress their wounds. Two men were killed, a girl of nineteen had her legtaken off by a moving railway truck, and over one hundred, people have been hurt, many so seriously' that their recovery is despaired of. The flames spread along the tail way line, burning waggons, sleepers, telegraph posts, and signal cabins, and compelling the stoppage of the traffic ; not, however, before the " Flying Scotchman " had dashed through the flaring archway of fire without catching alight.