The Cape Girardeau Democrat. (Cape Girardeau, Mo.) 1876-1909, 1900-11-03
IN AWFUL CATASTROPHE.
Another Horror Added to the Long
List that Have Startled
New York City.
SUCCESSION OF TERRIFIC EXPLOSIONS.
Over Ninety Persons known to Have
Been Injured-Number of Dead
Unknown-Great Buildings De-
molished and Streets Strewn With
Debris-MOney Scattered Like
Sands on the Sahara.

Debris-Money Scattered Like
Sands on the ahara.
New York, Oct. 3O.-The long list OF
fire horrors that have occurred in and
around New York, 4 list that includes
the Royal hotel fire, the Park place
disaster, and the Windsor and Hobo
ken fires, was added to yesterday by
a fire and explosion that shook the
lower end of Manhattan like an earth
quake, hurled a seven-story building
into the air, and set fire to W blocks
of buildings, with a loss of life that
only the efforts of hundreds of men
who were rushed to the work of dig
cling away the ruins as soo as the
fire was extinguished, will reveal.
Where the Fire Originated.
The big building of Tarrant & Co.,
makers of medicinal s~pecialties, stand
ing at the northwest corner of Green
witch and Warren street, and filled
with chemicals, took fire in some way
that may never be known at about a
quarter after twelve yesterday after
noon. 1t was sixteen minutes after
noon that a citizen rushed into the
house of fire engine 90, on Chambers
street, near Greenwich, and shouted
that Tarrants' drug store was ON fire.
He had seen a volume of black smoke
coming from the third-story window.
An alarm was turned in. Soon after
wards second and third alarms were
turned in.
Terrific Explosion Occurred.
One fire company had just arrived
when a terrific explosion occurred,
and threw the entire engines crew
down the stairway. The firemen, real
izing the danger of their position,
rushed out of the building to the
street.
The explosion had filled the street
In front with a shower of falling glass
and small debris, which SEN the
crowd, which had already gathered on
the opposite sidewalks, fleeing for
safety, and caused the horses hitched
TO the engines to real and try to get
away.
More Awful than the First.
Capt. Devanney, of the company, or
dered his crew back into the building
again. They were dragging the line
to the doorway for the second time
when came another explosion, more
terrific than the first, and the whole
crew was hurled across Greenwich
street, Devanney being so badly in
jured that he vas sent to a hospital.
Rescufng the People.
In the meantime the other engines
that had responded to the alarm had
collected, and the firemen were busy
rescuing people from surrounding
buildings. Firemen had already taken
many girls down the only fire escape
upon the building, and more persons
had been carried down the 'scapes of
the Homemade restaurant next door
and the buildings adjoining on War
ren street.
Building Leaped into the Air.
The second explosion occurred about
five minutes after the first. From the
accounts of witnesses, the building
seemed to leap into the air, and in a
moment masses of brick wall, timbers
and stone were falling into the street.
The force of the explosion tore away
the walls of the big commission store
houses fronting on Washington street,
and caused them to collapse. falling
all at one in a mass of timbers, boxes
and barrels, of which the flames which
burst out from the T%arrant building
like the belching of a cannon, al once
took hold.
Leaped Across the Street.
Across Warren street t the oppo-
site buildings the flames leaped, set
ting them all afire at once, the force
of the explosion demoishing windows
and all wooden structures about the
houses. In a moment Warren street
was choked with a mass of debris, and
the whole place was afame. The
great explosion was followed by half
a dozen more scarcely less intense,
and by a countless number of smaller
ones.
A Great Catastrophe.
The explosion and fire together had
assumed the proportions of 4
great catastrophe, and it was thought
that hundreds of lives had been lost.
Throngs of people were rushing about
In the nearby streets, many of them
panic-stricken, fleeing from the fire.
They mingled in the crowd that was
rushing down from Broadway to see
what had happened.
The Scene I'm the Streets.
Half an hour after the explosion
the streets for blocks around the fire
were crowded with fire apparatus,
with a score of ambulances, while
hundreds of police were being rushed
from all the lower precincts of the
city to form lines, and many priests
from nearby parishes were going
here and there in the smoke-obscured
thoroughfares, seeking for injured
who might need their aid. From the
burning districts a column of smoke
was rising high in the air, mingled
with flames that could not be con-
trolled by hundreds of streams
thrown upon them.
Destruction I'm Every Direction.
The second explosion carried de-
in every direction. That it
did not cause a wholesale loss of life