GORGE TRAGEDY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1938, Page 6

GORGE TRAGEDY

PREMATURE EXPLOSION KILLS TWO MEN TWO OTHERS ESCAPE SERIOUS INJURY VICTIMS BURIED UNDER ROCK (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Further details of the accident on the Ngahauranga Gorge road reconstruction work yesterday in which two men were killed and two injured show that it was due to the premature-firing of a charge of explosive. The victims were:— Killed. Cornelius Harold Ward, foreman, married, of Tunnel Camp, Khandallah. Stephen Timlin, single, of 17 Hutt Road, Kaiwarra. Injured. Cyril Berry, single, of 7 Queen’s Road, Lower Hutt, abrasions to legs and hands and shock. Admitted to hospital, but later able to return home. Victor Albert Holmes, married, of 50 Riddler’s Crescent, Petone, bruises and shock, but not sufficient to warrant admission to hospital. The accident occurred at a point nearly two miles up the gorge from the Hutt Road, where the biggest cutting on the job is being put through the old saddle. The job is being carried out by the Public Works Department. Preparations were being made to fire a shot in tire rock face of the cutting on the Jhonsonville side when the explosion occurred. The hole had been “bulled,” that is, a small charge had been fired at the base of a drilled .hole io make a cavity to contain the main charge, and Mr Timlin and Mr Berry were loading this hole with 40 sticks of the explosive. Mi- Holmes was standing nearby preparing the priming charge, which consists of a single plug with a detonator buried in it. The men loading the charge experienced some difficulty—it is believed a plug jammed in the hole —and called out to Mr Ward, the foreman. He was tamping the charge down when it unaccountably exploded. Mr Ward received the full force of the charge in the face and was killed instantly, and with Mr Timlin, who was standing immediately behind him, was buried completely in a mass of broken rock weighing many tons which was brought down by the blast from a- height of about 30 feet. MiBerry, who was further back, was buried to the armpits. Mr Holmes was blown clear, partly by the force of the explosion and partly by the outrush of air from beneath the falling cliff face. The priming charge he was holding in his hand was later found intact. Nearby workmen rushed to extricate the buried men. Mr Berry was soon freed, but Mr Ward and Mr Timlin were dead when their bodies were reached. A steam shovel and as many men as there were room for attacked the mass of fallen rock, but it was nearly three-quarters of an hour before the last body was recovered.