A Chapter of Horrors.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 171, 31 July 1901, Page 4

A Chapter of Horrors.

By Telegraph—Press Association. (Per R.M.S. Sierra at Auckland.) Kansas City, July 10. Tho Chicago and Altons Vcstibuled, Limited, passenger train collided with a fast live stock train between Marshall and Norton, Missouri. Seventeen persons were killed, and seventeen are in tho hospital. Tho passenger train was travelling in three sections. Tho wrecked train was the first section. The trains collided head on. The engines wore packed on either side of tho track, and the baggage and chair cars piled on top of the engines. Tho dining-car tipped over. The. forward cars of the train telescoped. Some of the cars took fire, and tho wreck was soon a blazing mass. Steam and scalding water escaped from the engines, burning many passengers frightfully, and enveloping tho wreck in a cloud of mist. Rescue work was difficult. Tho bellowing of cattle was mingled with the shrieks of tho injured people. Many passengers wore imprisoned in tho cars, and, as the scalding steam poured upon them, they prayed aloud, and pleaded to their rescuers to hasten. They were taken out as rapidly as possible, but there were not enough helpers. After spending several hours in the terrible situation, the injured were compelled to take a long ride to Kansas City on tho rescue train. The train wrecked was one of tho finest passenger trains in tho United States.

On Juno 28th sixteen persons wero killed and about fifty injured in a train wreck at Indiana. Tho train consisted of cloven ears, and was going at a high ralo, when it plunged through a trestle bridge undermined by rains. The embankment both sides of a little stream dropped at a sharp degree a distance of forty .feet. Owing to the momentum of the train, it appeared to fall back to tho bottom. Five cars wont down the bank, and one sleeper and a private car remained on tho track. It is believed tho wash-out was caused by a cloud-burst. At Patterson, Now Jersey, seventeen persons were killed and several injured by an explosion of fireworks in a store on the ground lloor of a crowded tenement building. Tho force of tho explosion wounded people half a block away. Within a minute every window of the four-storoy wooden building whore it occurred was spouting fire. The occupants of the flats in tho structure bung from tho windowsills, and twenty were rescued by the firemen from these perilous positions. The firemen attempted to keep the flames from consuming tho upper storeys, where many persons wore imprisoned, but the lower walls wore so weakened that they came crashing down, threatening the lives of the firemen and injuring several. Tho bodies taken out were mostly beyond recognition.