FIRE IN CINEMA.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 November 1921, Page 5

FIRE IN CINEMA.

TRAGEDY IN AMERICA. BIG CASUALTY LIST. FLAME SWEEPS THEATRE. AUDIENCE IN A PANIC. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received Nov. 28, 8.15 p.m. New York, Nov. 27. The Newhaven (Connecticut) correspondent of the New York Times states that it is believed fifty are dead and five hundred seriously burned, and hundreds of others seriously injured, through an explosion in a cinema theatre. A later message says more than a thousand persons crowded the Rialto Theatre, which was an old renovated structure, and highly inflammable. Half the number were students at Yale University, which it situated at Newhaven. It was the feature of the night, and the management was presenting a tableau in which 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 tinderlike rafters caught fire from the incense, crossed electric wires, or the explosion of the film. A flame, with • one roar, enveloped the audience, and none were found to have escaped without some injury. The I vast majority were burned or singed. The burning persons fled madly, trampling over the fallen in an attempt to escape from the fire, which in a few minutes spread, enveloping and destroying several other buildings. Firemen are now exhuming charred bodies.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.