CAUSE A MYSTERY

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 36, 13 February 1933, Page 7

CAUSE A MYSTERY

HEARTRENDING SCENES

SMOULDERING RUINS

LONDON, February 11. Tho. cause of the catastrophe is a mystery. There are rumours of incendiarism and. sabotage, but the police chief declares there is no evidence of either. .

One report attributes the causes to a motor-car back-firing in a petrol yard. The gasometer was believed to be constructed on the safest possible- principles, being of 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 lower edge of the container. Experts express the opinion that the recent earthquake might have upset the simple contrivance, allowing the entrance of air and forming a highly explosive mixture.

The gasometer waa 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 the havoc to roads, makes the transport of supplies and the removal of the bodies a Herculean task-. The police have ordered the people to leave the low-lying parts of the-town owing to the danger of suffocation. Thero were heartrending scenes as the police restrained men and women from searching for lost relatives. BODIES UNRECOGNISABLE. Even the adjoining woods were stripped of their branches as if they had been bombarded,', and a dense ipall of smoke rises from the still-burning gasworks and neighbouring, petrol tanks. Smoke fills the streets, which are littered feet deep .with debris, among which survivors are disconsolately seeking the dead, burrowing frantically in the smoking ruins, some heaps of which are still unapproachable owing to the fierce heat.

Many bodies have been recovered in an unrecognisable condition. The indications are that whole families have been killed.

Twenty-five bodies were recovered from one block of houses in the workmen's colony alone. Hundreds were buried in neighbouring streets; few have been rescued;

Some extraordinary experiences awaited the excavators. 'They, found a baby uninjured in a. cradle and the parents dead alongside. A man1 who was released after an hour's work went mad and attacked hisj rescuers. '

Policemen, firemen, and.thousands of volunteers are removing the debris. At least a quarter of the town has been destroyed. , . J ■

Saarbruecker Street, adjoining the gasworks, with' a row of houses . 300 yards long, was completely swept away, and is now mere blazing heaps, conceal r ing the victims. Among these were five families, one of which comprised five children. '

One woman when extricated gasped, "Eight o£ us were drinking coffee when the explosion occurred"; she died immediately.

The mutilated remains of the other seven have since been found.

The hero of the disaster was a workman, who, despite the peril o£ 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 eighty hours and also spread deadly fumes over the district.

Tragedy awaited an ambulance squad who rushed to the scene when the petrol tanks exploded. They were completely wiped out by the subsequent gasometer explosion.

EYE-WITNESS'S ACCOUNT. Tho "Daily Mail's" Berlin correspondent gives an eye-witness's account of tho disaster.

"After the explosion gigantic, flames sh^ot into the sky,3 ho says. "Panic seized the inhabitants, who imagined that an earthquake Had-occurred. They rushed into the streets screaming. Sick people, helped out of their beds, were rushed to other parts of the town. "Every house in one street for,a distance of 500 yards was destroyed. Fifteen Bimply disappeared. In another street ton houses collapsed simultaneously. The roofs' of houses two miles away were lifted clean off.

"Doctors in many cases were forced to operate on 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 undercarriage was left of a passing tramcar in which several are believed to have been killed.

At midnight 50 bodies had been recovered, many terribly mutilated. Hundreds of despairing people are wandering among the wrecked and darkened- streets searching for relatives; distracted wives are seeking husbands, and children are crying for their parents.

The inhabitants are still panicstricken, although the danger of further explosions seems to be over. The head of the police department

says the lowest estimate of the damage is £330,000. Hundreds of homeless people arc being fed and sheltered by their fellow-citizens.

ANOTHER EXPLOSION

BAVARIAN IRONWORKS

DAMAGE, BUT NO DEATHS

(Received February 13, 8 a.m.)

BERLIN, February 11.

Exactly twenty-four iours after the Jfeenk irchen disaster, the gas plant at the Hammernu iron works, Eeichenhall, Bavaria, exploded, with terrific force, shattering two gas- generators, thirty feet high, and setting flro to the workshops, which were destroyed. Fortunately, the workmen had departed, and there were no casualties.