The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-11-29
The scene of the holocaust presented a bleak and desolate appearance this morn

ana Sucn OIncE par rtS VI shAS "ASS->~~ coaches as would not burn. Engines Ss and 6O9 were lying in' the ditch on the right hand of the road' veritable scrap heap. Broken cars, many of them daube . with the blood of their last occupap < were scattered about and being usec . cushions by those huddled around $ 3 open fires about the scene. When the first relief train arri' 2 on the scene last night from Adr' the baggage car. the immigrant two coaches and a chair car in tre %No lS were burning so fercely that .-. reiiet party could not get within several hum dred feet of them.
 It was past midnight before search | of the ruins of the burned cars could pc begun. Scores of men then began deiving | in the mass. ., As it was slowly turned over small crisp pieces of those who had perished Tn l the flames were occasionally found The largest portion of any body found was | terribly burned trunk.
 The heat had been so intense that the I cars and their human freight had been | reduced to a blackened powder that was l blown about for hundreds of feet by the | breeze. 7. | Inside of two hours tho iron works of \ the cars had all been hauled into the l ditch at either side of the road. | The first relief party on the scene ar
 rived from Adrian, fifty-five minutes after | the accident, and they immediately began | work on the second coach of the train 1 No. f. which was telescoped by the colli- l sion and reduced to splfnters. The wreck of the coach was damned | into a space hardly fourteen feet square. From the ruins of the car the bodies or | four men and one woman were taken Train Nc 8, which was waiting on the l side track at Sand Creek (having follow | ed No. 13 from Detroi), was run up to | the scene as soon as the accident was re- ported there, and on this train practically all the injured from the westbound train were loaded and started for the com panys hospital at Peru, Ind. A relief train from Montpelier, O., took more of the injured. from the eastbound
 train and also started for Peru with them. '-,
 Pending the arrival of these ambulance trains, the injured ,as fast as they were extricated, were placed In two sleepers attached to train No. 13. which were not
 wrecked or taken to the house of Ben Huss, which is within 100 yards or where the collision occurred
 At o'clock the bodies of the dead, to- gether with the few awful fragments
 that had been dug out from the burning
 cars, were loaded aboard a car and taken
 back to the morgue at Adrian. At 4:15 the body of Fireman Balderf
 was discovered, damned into the wrecked
 cab of his engine, No 15l. From the position of his body he had
 evidently been in the act of feeding the furnace when the trains came together. His body was badly crushed, but suH recognizable.
 At o'clock the wreckerS removed the
 last piece of wreckage from the tracks.
 It was engine 151. Although considerably
 warped and bent, its wheels were still true enungh, so that they kept the track after the engine had been pulled back on the rails, and it wes towed to the Seneca | side track.
 The westbound train was known as No. | IS and a regular, which, besides it's regu- | lar coaches had several coaches filled | with Italian immigrants going West from New York
 The eastbound train was known as No 4. the Continental Limited. It was ves- tibuled train consisting of baggage car,
 combination coach and sleeper. The
 cause of the wreck was a misreading of
 orders by Engineer Strong of the Conti-
 mental Limited. The conductor of the train did not know that the engineer had
 misunderstood the order, and supposed that his train was going on a siding. Finding that the train was running rap idly, the conductor put on the airbrakes himself. but it was too late. The two trains crashed together and the cars on the westbound train were cramped up in a heap of ruins.
 Engineer Strong stated in positive terms to an Associated Press represen- tative that his orders directed him to pass trains No. 13 and No. (the latter oI1 -nIxt fnlI fner n nafrnitl Sand Creek. Said Strong
 q saw the headlight of No. 13 four or five miles before the collision occurred. but supposed the train was side-tracked at Sand Creek, waiting for us to pass. The glare of the powerful electric head light made 1t impossible to see the exact
 location of the other train. The fireman and both jumped from the right hand gangway."
 Strong and the fireman were both hurl-
 ed 300 feet, but, although scratched, cut
 and terribly jared, they were not seri-
 ously injured.
 The immigrants and other passengers
 on train 13 were crushed between the splintered cars.
 To add to the horror, the wreckage
 caught fire instantly and in short time
 the bodies of the dead and those of the
 injured who were pinned down were being burned.
 The spot where the wreck occurred was
 in the open country with but one farm
 house nearby and facilities for aiding the
 injured were extremely inadequate.
 "As soon as the news of the disaster
 reached Superintendent Burns here a re-
 lief train was dispatched to the scene
 with a score or more surgeons on board.
 Farmers from near by and those who
 escaped from the wreck made heroic eff
 forts to rescue the less fortunate.
 The condition of the wreck was such
 that in the darkness 1t was impossible to
 render immediate aid
 The immigrant train was made up of
 nine cars behind two engines. Six of
 these cars were damned together. Very
 soon the wreckage began burning fiercely
 and those in the cars were slowly roasted
 to death. There was absolutely no
 means at hand to fight the fire.
 "It was a veritable hell of fire" said
 Victor C. Greenbaum of New York city,
 who escaped with slight injuries.
 The scene immediately surrounding the
 wreck was terrible. In the semi-darkness
 illuminated only by the glare from the
 fire of the wreckage, men stumbled about
 over corpses which fell from the ruins
 and which after the flames had died out
 were hauled from the debris.
 People came hurrying from the near by
 villages, and these with the help of those
 who escaped on train No f. did what they
 could.
 The immigrants. who escaped from the
 last two cars were unable to speak Eng
 fish, and could give no idea apparently
 of the number of people who were in
 each. The number of dead must be