Arizona republican., 1910-12-20


 1 plant When the workmen were set i to clearing away the lumber it is as sumed that one dropped a steel tool across the third rail. There was a flash of electricity and the great reservoir of accumulated gas exploded.
 ! The worst focus of death was at the i spot at which the trolley car and auto mobile were hurled together. Seven 1 passengers were dumped under the side | of the car in tangle of iron work and sharp fragments of broken panels The head of Miss Mary Pope was caught between a stanchion of the OverteEned car and the automobile beneath and she was crushed to death. Three other | passengers, all men. were overwhelmed and died before help reached them. J Twenty feet away. Miss Edith Offner, | age 2S, a stenOgrapher in a magazine office. was speared through the head ! by a flying joist Policeman Toomey had just signalled the trolley car to stop and was leading two little girls across the street by hand cne was torn from his hand by the first blast of air and the other by the rebound. The second girl, Mary Gilman, had her right i leg torn off by the flying fragment of an iron railing surrounding the Lex 1! ington avenue station.
 Seventeen men in fire house No. 2 were shaken from their beds Battalion Grief Duffy was sitting at lie desk wien the windows fell about him and an iron girder burst through the wall knocking him down, badly bruising him. He got the men to bandage him and went to work immediately. At a Bible teachers training school founded by Miss Helen Gould, in Lex ington avenue, fifty young men and women were eating breakfast. Those on the far side of the room first realized that there had been a serious accident when, looking toward the street. they saw the napery of the tables nearest the windows dabbled with blood. Fully half the students were painfully cut by flying glass At a babies hospital at Fifty ninth street and Lexington avenue the in- fants were being given their morning both. The nurses were thrown to the floor with babies in their arms, other babies were tipped out of their cribs and in two instances the babies were popped upward out. of the tubs as if they had been drawn out by a powerful suction.
 Fire Commissioner Waldo. who reached the scene of the explosion within twenty-five minutes after it ! occurred. ordered the heads of the divisions of the fire department to make a thorough investigation and issued the following statement to- night:
 All investigators from this depart ment agree in the general statement that the explosion was caused by a train backing into a bumper and breaking the two-inch supply main carrying the gas to various points in the yard. The escaping gas per meated the power house until it formed an explosive mixture by com bination with air. There is no trace of any other explosive at that point When the leakage was discovered there had escaped from 10000 to 10000 cubic feet. A large quantity became condensed under the floors and through the power house.
 He adds that the leak was discov- cred about fifteen minutes after the break occurred by William A. Withall. an employe of the railroad. Withall started for the power house to re- port, but the explosion occurred be- fore he arrived.
 The report of the municipal explos- i've commission of which Commissioner Waldo is ex-officio chairman, is simi- lar in tone to the commissioners re- port.
 What the exact cause of the igni- tion of this gas was it is impossible to say" says the report
 Waldo said that one important fea ture of the investigation will be to look to the future safe use of this gas, that life may not again be en- dangered in this way.
 The motorman of the train that rammed the bumper was held by the coroner on a technical charge of homicide. He said he smelled gas after the collision and notified the yardmaster.
 WOrkmen were digging in the ruins all night looking for the missing men. Assistant District Attorney Lavelle. accompanied by Guy w. Gulgin, en- gineer of the building department. continued their investigation far into | the night.
 Albert Seagrott, engineer of the motor which broke the pipe line. was released on parole tonight at the in stance of District Attorney Whitman. who says there is no evidence to war rant his heinz held