St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-08-19
FORTY MAY BE DEAD.

By some estimates forty people were
in the portion of the hotel destroyed,
nearly all of whom must be dead 1t
will be late before full list can be
obtained. The cause of the explosion
is uncertain, but it is supposed that
the battery boilers in the hotel base
ment must have exploded. The sound
was heard throughout the city, awak-
ening people a mile from the scene. A
cloud of dust was thrown a thousand
feet in the air and as there is no wind
it still hangs in mid-air like a huge
column. Minute atoms Of powdered
brick and mortar are descending con-
tinually. AT 1850 a. m. the
RUINS ARE BURNING FIERCELY
and the firemen have been obliged to
retreat from the work of rescue.
Every engine in the city is pouring
streams into the mass, but the flames
cannot be possibly gotten under con-
troll before many of the injured have
been cremated. AS their chances of
escape lessen. the cries of the i'm
prisoned people are increasing; heart
rending shrieks rising from every por-
ton of the great mass of wreckage.
Fears are now entertained that the
front portion of the building which
seems to be tottering, will fall and
bury the tiremen at their work.
During. the height of the excitement
a horse and team ran away on Eigh-
teenth street, stampeding the great
crowd of spectators. A number of
people were more or less injured by
being trampled on and falling in the
broken glass which covers the streets
and sidewalks in every direction.
Electric light wires dangling from
broken poles in the alley add fresh
peril to the f1remen. One horse was
killed by coming in contact with live
wire. Two injured women had been
almost eXtricated from the ruins when
the flames approached so close that
the rescuers had to abandon them for
their own safety. Both voices have
now been silenced, fire completing the
work commenced by the explosion.
The bodies of three women are also
TO be seen in the back part of the
building, but cannot be reached.
P1N1ONED IN THEIR BEDS.
AT 1:3O the flames are still keeping
the firemen back from the work of
rescue, except just at the line of the
alley wall. OF those pinioned beneath,
under the debris, only two are thought
to be alive, both men from the fifth
story, who are still lying on their
beds Both are covered with several
feet of debris about their heads, and
can hardly survive another half-hour.
Almost no progress is being made at
releasing them, as the smoke is blind
ing. The flames are only kept back
from their bodies by half a dozen
streams of water
Thus far six of the persons in the
house have been taken from the ruins,
all badly injured. In addition, four
were severely cut by glass falling into
the street. A piece of the cornice of
the Cheesman block, at Seventeenth
and Larimer street, fully block from
the Gumry hotel, was torn out and fell
| to the street, narrowly missing several
passers-by. The fragment weighed at
| least a ton.
In the wrecked building there was a
| tier of five or six room extending
| across the rear of the building, fac
| ing the alley, on each OF the three
| upper floors. All of these rooms are
believed to have been occupied, as peo-
PIE rsEid!ng III rooms across the alley