Daily public ledger. [volume] (Maysville, Ky.) 1892-191?, 1896-06-13
DANGEROUS WORK.
Death raced RsclsIessIy by People Who
.shoOt" OIL Wells.


vest from his perilous work Few of
them ever accumulate any money from
Il. however One reason is that so many
of them do not live long enough to store
up much of their wages, while the prices
are so low that the margin of profit is
not big.
In spite of the danger of handling
nitrcglycerine, a good many accidents
happen that are not followed by loss of
life. a group of brokers and producers
sat in the oil exchange recently talk
ing over some such events. +. S. Laugh
lin told of shot in three shells put in
a we'll of his not far from the city. Two
sections had been lowered 20 the sand.
The third was lost from the cord at
distance of 400 feet above the sand, and
when an attempt was made to recover
it and sink it the rest of the way it eX-
ploded. The shooter stood over the hole
us the shot went off. The explosion
knocked him down, lifted his. cap into
the derrick, burned tine one side of his
face and nearly drowned him with the
flood of oil and water that followed.
But he was around that same day in
good repair.
About a dozen years ago torpedo
man had two shots TO put in well on
the Bingham lots, near Coleyille. He
had carried the stuff out in his wagon,
and was filling the smells to lower them
into the first well. The other well was
on the hill farther up narrow ravine.
The upper well was connected with "a
tank filled with oil for firing the boiler.
Ply some error the oil line was opened
aud free flow of oil allowed to run
through while the shot was going down
the first well. The deluge of oil came
down to the drilling well, and instead
OF being governed at the boiler the fire.
man was not expecting it, and the result
was an oil fire of beautiful magnitude.
The season was fall time, with dry
hemlock brush on all sides, and as the
burning oil poured down the ravine it
headed directly for the well where the
shooter was with his load of glycerine
in the wagon for the other well. He
saw the flame sweeping toward him,
and as he was just ready to fire the shot
he lowered the weight and jumped to
his wagon. He put the whip TO his
horses and went out of the gulch on a
frantic gallop, his wagon bounding over
the roots like a ball. Men who met
him, not knowing the circumstances,
but recognizing the contents of the fell.
lows wagon, thought he had become
suddenly insane, and fled to get out OF
his way. Two miles he galloped his
horses over the awful roads and then
pulled up safe from harm with his dam
eerous load. But the well did not es-
cape so easily. The one he shot put up
it's flow of oil as the flame from the oil
swept down the valley, and it flashed
into blaze which shot hundreds of
feet into the air. A stiff breeze blew the
flame along the ridge, and in few
minutes a dozen wells were afire. Oil
from the burning tanks poured down
the hillside, the dry brush, saturated
with oil, burned fercely. and for two
days the mountain was a mass of flame.
Had the shooter not taken his wagon
out of the vicinity with the fearful
speed he did an explosion that would
have wrecked everything in sight would
have been added to the fire.
"It's a wonder Oil City is not wiped
off the face of the earth with the stuff"
ventured listener, who sat by. II
know of many instances of glycerine
going through town. You recollect
that explosion of a wagon load near
Franklin last summer. There are three
or four men on the floor now who met
that wagon as they were going out to
Il picnic above town. They remarked
then about the havoc it would cause il
it should explode while going through
the city. They were Mortified, you may
be sure, to learn on their return that it
had passed through the city and ex-
ploded on its way to Franklin"
II knew one day not long ago" said
another, 'of wagon with 100 quarts
on it to drive through Oil City at ono
o'clock in the daytime"
The general opinion is that if the
truth were known all of the towns of
the whole oil country are more or less
subject to the same danger.--Pitts-
burgh Times.