A TERRIBLE EXPLOSION

Hokitika Guardian, 13 February 1933, Page 5

A TERRIBLE EXPLOSION

GERMAN GASWORKS DISASTER HEAVY FATALITIES PCCUR WIDESPREAD DESTRUCTION RESULTS (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.' LONDON, Feb, 10. An explosion at Neukirchen in the Saar Valley, hurled 100 feet aloft the largest gasometer in the valley. The gasometer was 250 feet high and had a capacity of 120,000 feet. The neighbouring workmen’s colony with a population of 2000, was wrecked. Over one hundred were killed and one thousand were injured, including 250 critically hurt.

Modern) factories surrounding the ■scene were badly damaged and no window in the district wals left unbroken. Bodies were hurled across the streets.

The massive cover of the gasometer was blown one and a half miles away over the railway station. Fifty-of the nearest houses were reduced to fragments and women and children were buried in the rains, from which it was almost impossible to rescue them. The explosion destroyed the telegraph and telephone wires, strewed the railway with wreckage, stopping all trains and bombarded the town with flying fragments of metal, comparable to war time.

The flames were visible for thirty milels, and the blast was heard sixty miles away.

The entire gasworks', where 500 were employed by the Roechling Company, became a roaring furnace, las also did the ironworks, necessitating frenzied efforts by the district fire brigade's.

All the hospitals and doctors’ waiting rooms and surgeries are crammed with 'the injured, who were- hurried thither in motor lorries and ambulances gathered from twenty-five miles distant.

ACCOUNT OF EYE-WITNESS

TERRIBLE TALE OF DAMAGE

Hardly had the police drawn a cordon around the area when fresh explosions occurred, owing to the ignition of adjacent barrels of petrol, which may lead to an explosion of a second crasometer.

LONDON, February 11

The people are evacuating all streets and houses within a vadiuis of 1000 yards of the gasworks, fearing gas poisoning. The clergy are endeavouring to allay the panic. Many of the inhabitants have fled. The disaster is attributed to a fire in the benzol store. By midnight 50 bodies had been recovered. many terribly mutilated, * and the rescuers are still finding dead and injured. Hundreds of despairing people are wandering among the wrecked darkened streets, searching for relatives. Distracted wives are seeking their husbands, and children are crying for their parents. The inhabitants are still panicrtricken, although the danger of further explosions seems to be over.

CASUALTIES TOTAL 220

GASOMETER HURLED OVER TOWN. LONDON, February 12. Later estimates of the Neukirchen death roll state that the casualties total at least. 221, including whole streets of families. One woman, who was extricated, grasped: “Eight of us were drinking coffee when the explosion occurred.” She died immediately, and the mutilated remains of the other seven mentioned have since been found. The gasometer, which was similar to the Q ne at Wollestoncrrft, Sydney, Australia, was 140 feet in diameter. The gasometer was thrown for half , n mile over the town, like an enormous shrapnel shell. A nearby railway sation was submerged, and miles of railway tracks were destroyed. This coupled with the havoc done to the roads, makes the transport of supplies and the removal of the bodies a herculean task. The police have evacuated the lowlying parts of the town, owing to the danger of suftocaion. Neukirchen, which yesterday was a town of thirty-five thousand inhabitants, all peaceful and happy, is today filled with crazy, grief-stricken people, amidst a spectacle of ruin only paralleled by a shell-torn city in wartime. Even the adjoining woods are stripped of their branches, as if they had been bombarded, and. a dense pall of smoke rises from the still burning gasworks and the neighbouring petrol tanks.

LONDON, February 11

Smoke fills the streets, which are littered feet- deep with debris, in which the survivor. l ! are disconsolately seeking for the dead, burrowing Irani:.callv in smouldering ruins, some heaps of which ere still unapproachable, owing to their fierce heat.

Many of the bodies recovered are unrecognisable, but the indications are that whole families have been destroyed.

T.vent"-five bodies were recovered m rue block of houses in a workmen’s colon- clone. Hundreds buried m relglib; nring sheets are mostly undiscovered. An extraordinary exp rieme await-

ed some ex avatora. They found a lv.tbv mi injur *d in its cradle while its parents were dead alongside it. One man who was released after an hour’s work, went mr.d, and attacked his rescuers.

' 99 j Police, firemen and thousands of volunteers, are removing the debris. At least one quarter of the town has been destroyed. Saarbuecher Street, adjoining the gasworks, with a row) of houses three hundred yards long, has been completely swept away, and consists now of mere blazing heaps, concealing the victims. Among these tvete five families, one of which comprised five children.

The latest estimate of the deaths is over one hundred. Already over sixty bodies have been recovered. Experts say that there is no fear of a further explosion. Many of the citizens have fled. There .are injured people scattered nil over the town. Many distracted people are going to the hospital and from house to house searching for their missing friends.

"When the. explosion occurred there was only thirty-five thousand cubic metres of gas m the gasometer. By Monday there would normally • have been 120 thousand cubic feet.

The '‘Daily Mail’s” Berlin correspondent gives an eye witness account of the Neukirchen catastrophe, as follows :

“After the explosion, gigantic flame© shot into the sky. Panic seized the inhabitants, who imagined that an earthquake had occurred. They rusted into t:i.e streets screaming. Sick people were helped out of their beds, and rushed to other parts of the town. Every house in one street for a distance of five hundred yards was destroyed. Fifteen of the houses simply disappeared. In another 'Street, ten houses collapsed simultaneously. The roofs of houses’ two miles away were lifted dean off. “The doctors, in many eases, were forced to operate on the, injured in the street. 'Priests were there udmjnjKkari»g the lart Sacraments to the dying. When the roof of the Neukirchen picture theatre collapsed, three were killed, and many weire injured. Only the undercarriage was left of one tramc-ar, wherein several are believed to have been killed.” The catastrophe is the worst one in Europe since the explosion of the ammonia tank alt Qppau in 1921, which killed 350 people. Tragedy ■ .awaited an ambulance squad, who rushed to the scene when the petrol tanks at the out-set exploded. They weire completely wiped out by ithe subsequent gasometer explosion.

THE HERO OF THE DISASTER

TURNS OFF GAS DESPITE DANGER

The hero of the Neukirchen disaster was a workman who, despite the peril ot instant death, rushed to the control house immediately that the explosion occurred, and turned off the emergency supp'ies of gas, which, otherwise, would have continued fo feed the flames for eighty hours, and would also have spread deadly fumes over the district.

■The eauce of the catastrophe is a mystery. Incendiarism and sabotage are Lota run cured, bat the Police Chief j declared that there is no evidence thereof.

One report attributes the disaster to a motor-car back-firing in the petrol yard. The gasometer was believed to be constructed on the safest possible principle it being of the wet type, wherein ti.e lower pant of the container is plunged under water, it never rising high enough to permit the air to enter between the water and the lower edge of the container.

Exports ex pi oss the opinion that (the recent earthquake in the Bavarian and nearby region? might have upset a simple co.iirivanee allowing tile entrance of air, thus forming a highly explosive m’xfture.

The whole of Germany is in mourning ever the disaster. Flags are at half mast.

The broadcasts of light music have been cancelled.

A public funeral is being arranged f t , r t>.o v'ctiirs, who will be interred i.u a common grave.

Rio ident von H.' id nburg has headed the donations for relief, which nowtotal five thousand sterling. The Saar Commission lias given six thousand.

1 At Neukirchen, the Polco Chief says that the lowest estimate of the damage is €339.000. The bhoiiisads of homeless people are

being fed and sheltered by their fellow citizens. There were heartrending scenes as the police restrained men and women from searching for lost relatives. . FRANCE EXPRESSES SYMPATHY. LONDON, February 11. INI. Le 13run, President of France, lias telegraphed France’s sympathy, along with the intimation that the French Government are contributing one hundred thousand francs towards the relief, the President recalling that France was allotted the Saar mines under the Peace Treaty. EXPLOSION IN BAVARIA. BERLIN, February 11. Exactly twenty-four hours after the Neukirohen catastrophe, the gas plant at Ila,mmerau ironworks in Reichenhall. Bavaria, exploded with terrific for e, shattering two gas generators thirty feet high. The cxn'osion fired the workshops, which were destroyed. Fortunately the workmen had departed-. There were no casualties.