TRAGIC FIRES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5333, 1 October 1928, Page 2

TRAGIC FIRES.

DREADFUL CASES ON RECORD. HUGE LOSSES IN LIVES. Madrid’s- theatre fire disaster, with its tragic loss of somewhere about 300 lives, i.-: by no means the wcjst on record, for in the Iroquois Theatre lire in; Chicago on December 30, 1903, n 0 less than 587 bodies were recovered and 300 more persons who attended the, performance were missing with no indentifiable remains (states a writer in the Dominion). This thea.tre was not an old apd out-qf-datc building like that new destroyed in Madrid, but a fine modern structure built at a cost, of £210,000. A pantomime was being played ait the time and -some flimsy stage scenery eaugh fire. A move was at once made to lower the fire-proof curtain, but it would not work, ajid thereafter panic reigned, and the whole building wa; soon an inferno of flame. The heaviest, loss of life occurred on the stairs from the upper balconies, the bodies being piled twelve feet thick at the foo,t of them. It was after this fire that it became the rule nearly all over the world' to raise and tower the safety curtajn at every theatrical performance to make sure it was always in good working order. , . The mo lt disastrous theatre, fire recenty recorded was at the little village of Dromcollogber, near Limerick, in Ireland. I t n a loft over a garage. some 200 people were picked in tightly to see a kinema show on® evening in. September, 1926, when fire broke out and 47 perished. About the worst kinema fir.e oji record was at an early kinema exhibition given at a charity bazaar in Parijs on May 4, 1897. The primitive kinematograph mac.hine depended for its illumination on, a; lamp of ether which texploded, and soon the temporary wcpdl&n ing in which the shejw was being given was, a mass of raging flames. Nearly all fashionable Paris wa,s patronising the bazaar, and about 130 people, mostly society ladies, perished. Among the many notable victims was the Duchess of d’Alencc-n, sister of the then Empress of Austria, the tjuchess losing her life in her fearless’ efforts to save others.

More disastrous than any of the above theatre fires was the fire on) the New York excursion steamer General Slocum in 1904. This three-decked vessel was proceeding, up through Hell Gate with about 1200 children and 900 adults, on boa;rd and bandp playing, when a fire broke out in the cook’s galley, auff! soon got out ef control. As the current was too strong and the co,apt too rocky, the captain went ahead for the first good beach. Other vessels rushed alongside and took off people until they themselves were afire, and hundred B jumped into the water. Finally when the vessel was beapheff, stranding some distaiuce from the shore, the crowded hurricane deck cpllapsed into the furnace below, and the greatest number of the victims were killed at thg. moment when safety seemed' at ha,nd. Twelve hundred lives were tost altogether, a great number of those being children. Another greot holocaust of children occurred at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1908, when the Lake View School at Collinwood was burned in May, 1908. Of toe 360 children in the school, about 200 Iqst their lives, tlief death-roll including njine teachers. Three years later New York had .150 dead in the fire- in .the Triangle shirt-waist factory, when the three upper floors of a ten-stqrey building, took firer The victims were mostly Irish, Italian, and Hungarian girls. Very great heroism wa,s displayed CjU this occasion, by the elevator boys, .who kept on going, up with the lifts to the burning floors and saving lives until the lift c.ables fused and the machinery became unworkable. The biggest loss of life at any fire in the world is .said q have occurred in the much-burned! city of Moscow. This was not on tlie> famous occasion qf Napoleon’s entry in 1812—the fire then not being a heroic deed of selfsac,rifice by the Russians but an accident—but away back in 1571. Moscow at that period in its history had been having a. round of bad luck, and the Tartar Khan of the Crimea thought it a good time to attack it, ajnd having attacked it. he decided to fire it. Pretty well the whole city was burned, and of its 200,000 inhabitants, only 20,000 remained. Such are the figures recorded in Russian ajnnals. In the great fire of London nearly a, century later, although 13,000 houses were destroyed and an immense number of people rendered homeless, only eight lives were lost. When Mrs O’Leary’s famous! cow kicked over the lamp in her barn on .the evening of Octobejr. 8, 1871, and Chicago went up in smoke, some 20,000 buildings were, swqpt away over an area of 2100 acres. But although 100,000 people were rendered homeless a,nd property worth about £30,000, 000 or £40,000,000 destroyed, the loss of life did not amount to more than, 200 souls. This disaster shows how useful a leg-rope can be- when yo.u set out to milk old Strawberry qf an evening.