AWFUL CALAMITY IN OHIO.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2121, 6 November 1890, Page 3

AWFUL CALAMITY IN OHIO.

Despatches from Cleveland, Ohio, contain particulars of the explosion of sixteen hundred kegs of gunpowder, which took place at King’s Mills Station, Ohio, a small town ten miles north of Cleveland, on the afternoon of the 15th ult., and resulted in the death of thirty-five persons, who were blown to pieces, and the utter annihilation of the powder mill, cartridge factory, twenty labourers’ dwellings, the railway station, and two freight trains. It appears that about 4 p.m, on the 15th ult., two freight trains, which had been laden with 1660 kegs of powder, were at King’s Mills station preparing to start, when suddenly there was a terrible roar, as if an awful earthquake had occurred, and at the same moment an immense mass of iron, timber, earth, rocks, and dead ,bodies, mingled with all kinds of debris , where shot high in the air* Out of a cloud of smoke came the agonised yells ot wounded human beings. The powder mill, cartridge factory, and nearly all the freight trains had been annihilated; huge holes had been bored in the earth, and the hillside that rose from the railroad tracks had its entire surface torn off. Great trees were shattered,and immense masses of earth bad been hurled into the bed of the Miami river, damming that stream until it flooded the adjacent bottoms, and tore great gullies through fields' of corn, cutting a new channel that ruined hundreds of acres. The force of the explosion shook the earth for miles. la the little hamlet that surrounded the dapdt, a quarter of a mile from the milt, not one escaped uninjured. Houses were demolished, and wreck and ruin were on evey side. The depot caught fire, and in the excitement and terror of the moment the flames had their own way, and what the explosion left the fire sought to consume, spreading from house to house with dreadful rapidity. The railroad tracks were twisted and torn like so much paper, and two waggon loads of coal, distant 120 ft., were overturned and set on fire. Terrible scenes were witnessed in the streets adjoining the station and factory, where upwards of fifty persons, most of whom were young girls, were shockingly mutilated, and their screams of agony were heartrending. Thirty bodies, horribly mangled were recovered, and ( portions of the bodies of five others [ were discovered a considerable distance from the scene of the disaster; The cause of the explosion is not known, as not one of the railway people escaped.