READING STRUCK BY WHIRLWIND.

Manawatu Herald, 15 March 1889, Page 2

READING STRUCK BY WHIRLWIND.

Reading, Pa., Jan. 9. The most fearful disaster in the history of this city happened to-day. To-night more than a hundred households are desolated by grief. A terrible cyclone with appalling suddenness struck the city this afternoon, laid low the walls of the large paint shops of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company, burying a number of workmen, and then with renewed violence swept up Holly street and unroofed nine dwellings. j Then the storm proceeded in its ! fury. Directly in its path, at the corner of Twelfth and Marion Streets, stood the Beading Silk Mill. 'Her a about one hundred and seventyfive happy girls were working. The building was a huge structure, substantially built, four stories in height with a basement besides. It ooi oupied an entire block of ground. The size of the building itself was nearly three hnndred feet in length, and abont one hundred and fifty in width. It was surmounted by a massive tower, fully one hundred feet from the ground. The funnelshaped storm-cloud struck the building directly in the centre on its broadest side, which faced the west. It fell to pieces as if composed of so many building blocks. Nearly two hundred human beings went down iv. the awful wreck. The walls gave way, the floors fell down one on the top of the other and carried the great mass of human beings to the bottom. The bricks were piled up in the greatest confusion, while amid the hurricane and whistling, rushing, roaring and wind, terrible cries for succour were sent up to Heaven. Girls with blackened faces, bruised and broken limbs, their clothing tat tered and torn, dragged themselves from the ruins. So probably seventyfive to one hundred escaped or were dragged out by their friends. These, of course, worked on the upper floors and were thrown near the top of the debris. In some places the bricks and timber were piled up twenty feet deep and underneath are lying to-night human bodies by the score. Ab ut two hundred and fifty girls and young women are usually employed in the mill, but at tour o'clock about eighty were relieved from duty for the day. They returned to their homes before the storm came. The most reliable estimate of tonight places the number in the building when it went down in the neighbourhood of 175, and as before stated one hundred of these were rescued by friends or dragged themselves out immediately after the accident.—New York Herald.