Connecticut western news., 1876-02-04
THE SCHOOLHOUSE DISASTER.
Building In Ruins-Seventy-twO Lives
 IOst-A Sad Sight.

Building I'm Rutns-Sevenfy-Cw0 Lives
 I.Ost-A Sad Sight.
 A Paris paper publishes the following particulars of the frightful accident at Christmas festival in Switzerland, the reports of which have reached us by telegraph:
 The scene of the catastrophe was the schoolhouse of the village of Helliken, containing about seven hundred inhab- itants, and one of the many villages in the fruitful valley of Fricktha], in the parish of Wegstetten, district of Rhein- felden, near the Swiss salt pits. It has always been the custom in most of the Swiss villages to collect subscriptions among the well-to-do inhabitants for dis tribution among the school children as Christmas gifts. Everything had been prepared on this occasion in the usual way, and the children had assembled at six o'clock in the evening of Christmas day outside the schoolhouse, in the company of their friends and parents, wgiting impatiently for admittance to see the Christmas tree in order that they might receive their several gifts. At little after six o'clock the schoolmaster commenced lighting the Christmas tree. Having accomplished this, he opened the doors, when the crowd waiting out side rushed in one dense mass up the ! staircase leading to the room prepared up stairs for their reception. On their reaching the top of the second staircase the beams supporting the flooring sud denly gave way, precipitating every thing below, and by the violence of the shock causing the lower story to break down too. The interior of the edifce presented horrible scene of confusion, human beings, beams, school desks, chairs, mortar, and stone being heaped up together.
 | It was nearly seven o'clock when this occurred, and everything was in dark ness, when the remaining population of the village, hearing the cries of the un- fortunate children and their friends hur- ried to the spot, some of them subse- i quently running off for assistance to the peighboring villages of Zusgen and | Wagstetten, the women and children of which were assembled for 8 similar pur- pose in their respective village school houses. They set to work busily to clear the interior as soon as assis tance arrived, extracting from the de6r5s sev- enty-two corpses-those of fifty-six CuuuI0i, 1OuIGS0u uOIucES O1 1du1l1SS, and two men-besides about forty in jured persons and children, some of them very seriously hurt. It is said that in many families only the father or the grandparents are left alive. The propri- etor of the village inn lost his wife and three daughters by this frightful disas ter. Two little schoolboys, by creeping along the wall after the accident, got hold of the rope of the schoolhouse bell, and, pulling at it with all their might, brought more neighbors to their assist ance. The schoolmaster and the wife of the president of the village commune, the latter holding child tightly in her arms, were discovered perched upon the wall on the projecting remains of the pulpit. and were rescued uninjured after remaining three hours in their perilous position. The funeral of the dead pre- sented 8 scene of indescribable desola- ton to the remaining members of the grief stricken population.