THEATRE SENSATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 22, 27 January 1938, Page 8

THEATRE SENSATION

COLLAPSE OF A LANDING

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, January 20. Eighteen people, mostly young women, crashed 15 feet to the ground when the floor of a landing ~at a cinema at Stanmore, a Sydney suburb, collapsed. Ten were injured, six of them requiring medical attention. A four-months-old baby was buried ] under a pile of struggling picturegoers, but escaped with mild shock.

"There were about seventeen of us standing on the landing at the back of the theatre. Another woman came on the flooring, and we felt it begin to sag," said • Mrs. Young, mother of the baby. "Before I "knew what had happened I was falling through space. It was a terrible feeling. My one thought was for my baby. I clutched him in my arms. In a flash I hit "the ground. The breath was almost knocked out of me when the rest of the crowd came crashing on top. We were just a mass of struggling women with pieces of timber all over us."

"The crowd wa's streaming / out of the theatre for the interval," said a man, "when I heard a terrific crash. There was a sound of falling timber. Then I heard the screams of women."

While the ambulance officers were disentangling the injured, the staff of the theatre kept away the crowds of onlookers. A bell was rung, and the" second half of the programme' commenced. The crowd had settled quietly down to enjoy the picture before ambulance officers left the scene. Many were unaware of the accident.