HORROR & DESPAIR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 July 1939, Page 6

HORROR & DESPAIR

SCENES IN SPANISH TOWN

FOLLOWING ON EXPLOSION OF MAGAZINE.

ONLY SCORE OF HOUSES LEFT STANDING.

By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright.

(Received This Day, 12.25 p.m.) LONDON, July 10.

The British United Press correspondent in Penaranda de Bracamonle says the town is a desolated and smoking ruin strewn with corpses and debris for hundreds of yards around. There are 150 dead and 1 300 injured. Those made homeless have been rushed to Salamanca, where temporary hospitals have been installed. General Franco sent £5,000 for the relief of distress.

A majority of the citizens were cooking their Sunday dinners when the explosion occurred; hence the numerous fires. With a roar like an earthquake, the ceilings of houses collapsed amid the cries of the dying.

Flour-mills and shoe factories, which formed the main industries of the town, are still burning. Human and animal bodies are scattered amid household goods, utensils and bedding. Only twenty to thirty dwellings are standing of a town which housed five thousand people. Lorry-loads of fugitives, clutching odds and ends of furniture and weeping hopelessly, followed each other to Salamanca. The heat could be felt miles away and the stench is ghastly. Many of the rescuers were severely burned.