THE SAAR TRAGEDY

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 36, 13 February 1933, Page 8

THE SAAR TRAGEDY

TOWN A FUNERAL PYRE

WRECKAGE STILL BURNING

PLIGHT OP PEOPLE

United Press Association—By Electric leU graph—Copyright. . (Times Cable.) '. (Eeceived February 13, 2 p.m.) LONDON, February 12. The spectral light o£ the full moon at Neukirchen is paled by the 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 the midst of it lies the collapsed framework of the gasometer, like a huge spider's web. The houses immediately opposite have been blasted; into their original elements. Shattered stumps of trees flank the roadways, which are littered with wreckage and the carcasses of pigs. The explosion left a huge crater filled -with buckled plates and twisted girders, hear which the blazing benzol plant threatens to collapse on the subterranean benzol tanks, on which the firemen are constantly playing streams of water. "Whole families, separated in the panic of flight, are seeking to reunite themselves, unaware whether their kindred still survive.

The bodies of twenty men and twentyfive women and twelve children lie in the mortuaries of the four Neunkirchen hospitals awaiting Tuesday's obsequies and the presence of Herr yon Papen. The death roll will be swelled when Saarbrueken Strasse is cleared.

Tearful groups cluster at the barriers, which prevent unauthorised entry into the devastated areas where investigation has been temporarily suspended since'further rescues are hopeless, though grieving women are searching in nightmare fashion the ruins of their hornier homes of 800 people, from which protrude fragments of furniture and broken toys. Several families are repairing the less damaged dwellings with,- the object of resuming domicile. Some of those "who rushed into houses after the first explosion were killed and mutilated by the second. One woman's legs were blown off. A motor-car was hurled in the air many yards and the occupant killed. ' Ten of the reduced staff of 22 working in the by-product plant lost their lives. The wreckage ;is" still burning. -'". ■ ;'.'.

The furnaces of the steel works were little damaged, and will be closed, but the reconstruction of the entire plant will occupy a year, rendering many workless. The removal of the debris alone will take weeks.

' A priest, endeavouring to deliver a sermon in a crowded church, - broke down and was unable to preach. ' '