A TREMENDOUS EXPLOSION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10034, 3 May 1910, Page 5

A TREMENDOUS EXPLOSION.

in kobe harbour

GREAT DAMAGE DONE.

Recaived May 2, 9.25 p.m. SYDNEY, May 3.

Details arc to hand of the explosion which occurred in Kobe (Japan) Harbour on April 14fh. It was caused by a fire aboard Nickelo and Company's powder hulk, on which were stored 3,000 cases of dynamite, 50 cases of detonators, and 2,300 cases of gelignite. The whole city was violently shaken as if by a severe earthquake, while there were wrecked and damaged houses on every hand which gave one the impression of a city swept by a typhoon. The amount of the damage, which extends over a very wide area, cannot be estimated. Many of the houses in the immediate vicinity of the disaster have been totally wrecked or badly damaged. Scarcely a house in the foreign settlement and on the Kobe Hill has escaped broken windows and doors, and other evidences of the tremendous force of the three explosions, which ciosely followed each other.

Three other lighters with dynamite aboard were lying near, and were so badly damaged as to become waterlogged. Luckily they did not explode Only one life was lost—that of the watchman aboard the hulk—though there were numbers injured, including passengers on the tramways. The explosion was heard and felt for miles around.