Huge Cinema Disaster.

Hokitika Guardian, 29 November 1921, Page 2

Huge Cinema Disaster.

fifty persons kidded. AUSTRALIAN AND N. 7.. CABLE ASSOCIATION. NEAV YORK, November 27. The New York Times New Haven (Connecticut) correspondent states: “It is believed that 50 people are dead, and that 500 are, seriously burned, and that hundreds of others are seriously injured, through a huge cine, ma theatre explosion. A later message says: “More than one thousand persons were crowded into the Rialto Theatre, which was an old renovated structure highly inflammable. Half the number were students at the Yale University, situated at New Haven.

“It was a future night, the management presenting a tableau wherein incense was burned as a preliminary to the cinema showing. “There was a sudden explosion, which the police attribute to one of three causes. The tinder-like rafters caught fire from the incense or there were crossed electric wires; or else an explosion of film. “The flames with one roar enveloped the whole audience. None of the audience were found to have escaped without some injury. The vast majority were burned.

“Singed and burning pejrsonsi fieri madly, trampling over those who had fallen in an attempt to escape the fire, which, in a few minutes, spread rapidly, enveloping and destroying several other buildings. “Firemen are now exhuming the charred bodies.”