Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-02-27
SAVED. BLIND WOMAN
MANY OTHER RESCUES ARE
PLUCKILY MADE.

NEW YORK, February 27.-Only ex
IRENE heroism saved many persons from
being burned to death in the tenement
house. No AS West SD street, last night.
So daring was Patrolman Charles L.
Knopple in making many rescues that he
was finally taken unconscious, his lungs
filled with smoke, to Roosevelt Hospital,
where he lies in a critical condition.
But other men, in and out of uniform,
We're equally brave. So all in the tene-
ment including two old blind women, cs-
capped with their lives.
Twenty families, $50 individuals, most
of them children, dwell on the five floors.
In the cellar a boy was chopping wood
by candlelght at $50 pm. The boy went
away; when he tried to return to the Gel
lar choking smoke drove him back. The
house is DID, the fire spread rapidly; only
the nimblest had run out before two flights
of the front stairs were burning ana
smoke filed all the halls.
Brave Work Of Rescue.
It was quick action by the rescuers that
saved lives, and most of it happened While
the fremen were running in their hose,
although they arrived promptly. Knopple
ran into the house, Policeman Fox sent
the alarm and followed him; did Police
men Roos and Maxner, all of the West
47th street station.
On the first floor, front, lived James
Nolan, chauffeur for the New York
| Transportation Company. Nolan and his
son Charles, eighteen, carried the two
younger boys, Frank and James, down
the first short ladder the f1remen raised.
But the elder Nolans had no thought for
themselves. The second fire escapes were
crowded with Thomas Delaney's family of
four and John Sweeney, his wife and six
children. Charles Nolan and Knopple,
climbing like monkeys after cocoanuts, car
ried all these down the length OF the fire
escape and handed them over to the police.
These two rescuers were getting pretty
tired; they breathed with difficulty; their
eyes felt hotter than the fire But young
Nolan remembered that two blind women,
Mrs. Mary McCahill, ninety, and her spin
ster daughter Jane. sixty. lived in the rooms
back of the Nolans. Charles and Knopple
smashed in the door, but they could not live
| in the smoke.
They wet some Of the Nolans' towels to
protect their noses and mouths and went
back after the women to whose misery of
cropping darkness was added the deadly
| smoke. They found Jane MeCahill pros
trate on the floor and carried her to the
front window, although she weighs 200
pounds. Then they found her old mother,
about at her last gasp and handed her to
the active f1remen.
Saved Paralytic.
The elder Nolan helped to carry down
Patrick Donohue, a paralytfc, from the
third floor to the first. over the creaking,
blazing stairs. Policeman Roos and Maxner
saved Mrs. Reckert and her three children
on the third floor. O'Bren, Fallon and
Calvin of Fire Patrol No. B. which gall
| loped up from Both street took three fami-
| lies to the roof and down through No. $50.
A boy, nicknamed "Slabbo," rather the
| butt Of the neighborhood, showed great
bravery and no one around there will ever
mock him again.
All this was done so quickly, mark you,
that the fire extended only to the second
floor and did only 81 600 damage. Knopple,
who is about twenty-seven years old, lives
at No 367 West 4Sth street.