A CURIOUS ACCIDENT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1562, 8 March 1887, Page 4

A CURIOUS ACCIDENT.

A recent accident at Perkasie, Pa., tunnel, shows the importance of ventilation. The above tunnel is about half a mile long. Eepairs are being made therein. On the third inst, some fifty men were at work near the centre of the tunnel when a freight engine, unable to draw its train through the tunnel, became ‘ stalled ’ near the place where the men were at work. Fresh coal was put in the locomotive furnace, and the fan blast set in motion. Soon the train started, when it acted us a piston in a cylinder, driving the gases from the furnace before it, and when the gases struck the men who were working in the tunnel, they nearly all fell as if dead. With no premonition about forty of them became almost instantly unconscious, and fell ns they stood. One of the men, only partially affected, made his way to the tunnel entrance and gave the alarm. A gravel train with flat cars happened to be standing there, and it was run into the place of the accident, and the bodies of the fallen men were dragged upon the cars and taken out to the fresh air. All were supposed to be dead, but, to the surprise of the rescuers, the apparently dead men soon began to show signs of life, and in a short time all were themselves again, except one poor fellow who fell, and who in his fall sank into a pool of water, and probably was drowned. One of the unconscious men was found hanging on a ladder, head downwards, suspended by his feet. —Scientific American.