Connecticut western news., 1907-09-05
lREAT QUEBEC
 BRIDGE FALLS Eighty-fOur Men Drowned In St. Lawrence River.
MANY OF THEM AMERICANS
Pennsylvania Company Was Building Vast Structure.
COLLAPSED WITHOUT ANY WARNING

eal0Ver oPah Tn the Worio NOW . Subaqueous Wreck - Seven Years Work and Millions In Money Lost. Canadian Towns In Mourning.
 Quebec, Sept. 4. = Eighty-four men were plunged to death when the su- perstructure of what was to have been the greatest cantalever bridge in the world collapsed and sank into the St. Lawrence river between Sillery and St. Ronald, five miles from Quebec.
 All that remains of the grand struc- ture are its huge abutments on the shore, and in the river a great mass of tangled, twisted steelwork that pins down the men who had been working upon it. The scene Is one of utter ruin.
 Of the ninety-four men on the bridge death. Some swam to shore, others, who had clung desperately to the su- perstructure when the first ominous creaking was heard, were rescued by boatmen, and the remainder of those who have lived to tell the tale had fortunately run to the shore end of the bridge when the metal gave its warn ing.
 Of the ten rescued eight are in the hospital at Lewis, near the scene of the disaster. Two of them are not ex pected to live.
 The whistle had just blown for the men to quit work for the day when there came a grinding sound from the bridge at midstream The men turn4 ed to see what had happened, and an instant later the cry went up, ''The bridge is falling"
 The men made a rush shoreward, but the distance was too great for them to escape The fallen> section of the bridge dragged others after it, the snapping girders and cables booming like crash of artillery.
 Steamer Narrowly Escapes.
 The steamer Glenmont had just cleared the bridge when the first sec tion fell The water thrown up by the debris came clear over the bridge of the steamer. The captain at once low cred boats The small boats piled backward and forward over the sunk en wreckage for half an hour, but there was no sign of life A few float ing timbers and the broken strands of the bridge toward the north shore were the only signs that anything unusual had happened. There was not a ripple on the smooth surface of the St. Law renee as it swept along toward the gulf.
 There is scarcely family in the viii lage of St. Romuald and New Liver pool which has not been bereaved, while in some cases five and six men of a single family have been killed. From almost every house is heard sthe sounds of lamentations of women The men are gathered around the ap breaches to the wrecked bridge caring for the bodies of the dead as they are found.
 The disaster caused much excitement here and is regarded as a national ca lamity.
 Engineer MiracuIousIy saved.
 The engineer of a switch engine had a marvellous escape. A track had been laid on the bridge and an engine with freight cars and several heavy moving cranes were employed in getting the steel into position. The engine start ed out for the end of the bridge with load of steel, and as it approached the end the engineer felt his engine lurch. He at once shut off steam, but the engine continued to move. mo- ment later the collapse came. The en- gineer fell with his engine, but is un- able to say how he escaped He was picked up by a boat and was uncon- scious when brought ashore. When he recovered his senses the engineer could tell little beyond the fact that he felt the bridge go and knew he was falling The other men of his crew were lost.
 Several of the officials of the Phoe- nix Bridge company lost their lives. Among them are B. A. Yansell, gener- al foreman; Chief Engineer Burk, who had walked out on the bridge just before it fell, and John Wooley and Jim Idaho, foreman. ...
 The Quebec bridge was remarkable in that it was to be the longest single span cantalever bridge in the world, the length of the span in the center be- ing 1900 feet, or POO feet longer than that of the Firth bridge, at present the worlds longest single bridge span. There has been no bridge across the St Lawrence below Montreal At Quebec city all traffic was ferried across the river. This expense being held responsible for the failure of Que bee to grow, a number of the city's leading citizens secpred charter from the Dominion government to bridge the St. Lawrence.
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