River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1911-03-30

4
yond recognition. Another dropped
into tarpaulin held by three men.
Her weight tore it from their grasp
and she struck the street, breaking
almost every bone in her body. AL
most at the same time a man somer-
saulted down upon the shoulder of
policeman holding the tarpalin. He
glanced off, struck the sidewalk and
was picked up dead.
Joseph Tito and Joseph Caspar were
in charge of the two passenger eleva-
tors on the Washington place side OF
the building, where the main entrance
opened. At the first alarm of fire.
they began to make trips to the danger
zone as fast as they could operate
their cars. The two freight elevators
on the Green street side were oper-
ated by Frank Formenck and Michael
Sciacca, and they, too, took hand
in the life saving. The two passen-
ger elevators are said to have made
at least 20 trips and the two freight
elevators half as many. The machin-
cry Of the freight elevators broke
down under the rapid work and they
were rendered useless.
After one or two trips by the eleva-
| tors the press against the doors OF
| the shaft became so great that they
were opened with difficulty when the
| cars, each having capacity of 10
persons, arrived at the ninth floor.
Tito struggled to close the doof of the
shaft when his car had been damned
full, but after he had started the car
| it was torn open and number OF
women 1eaped into the shaft after the
descending car, falling on the roof OF
| the car even after it had reached the
ground floor. Those who had landed
alive had been crushed to death
against the walls.
With this gruesome freight, Zitc
continued to run his car. The shaft
was practically clogged with the dead
on the roof of the car and the smoke
and flames were roaring in the shaft.
Elevators Are Rushed.
Within the building man on the
eighth floor stationed himself at the
door of one of the elevators and with
a club kept back the girls who had
stampeded to the wire cage. Thirty
were admitted to the car at time.
They were rushed down as fast as
possible.
The call for ambulances was fol-
lowed by successive appeals for police
until 500 patrolmen arrived to cope
with crowd numbering tens of thou
sands-a mixtue of the morbidly curl
Gus and of half crazed relatives and
friends of the victims. A hundred
mounted policemen had to charge the
crowd repeatedly to keep it back.
Led by Fire Chief Croker a squad
of firemen stormed the stairway and
gained access to the building at seven
O'Clock. Two searchlights from build
ings opposite lighted the way of the
fire fighters as they assembled to the
top floors. Fifty roasted bodies we're
found on the ninth floor. They lay
in every possible posture, some so
charred that recognition was impos-
sible. A half dozen were nude with
the flesh hanging in shreds to the
bones.
Bodies Taken Away.
Across the street there rested on
the sidewalk a hundred pine collins
into which were placed the bodies.
AS fast as this was done the collins
were carried away in any kind of a
vehicle that could be pressed into serv-
ice to the morgue at Bellevue hospital
and to the Charities Pier morgue,
opened for the first time since the
Slocum horror.
On the tenth floor of the building
adjoining the burning structure is the
law department of New York univer-
sity. Here 20 odd students were list
ening to a lecture by Frank H. Som
mer. former sheriff of Essex county,
New Jersey.
He saw the smoke and saw the
girls trapped on the roof. He led his
class to the roof of the university
quarters where they found two lad
ders.
Rescue Forty Girls.
The boys seized these, bore them
down two fights to the roof of an In
tervening building, swarmed out OF
the windows and raised them to the
roof of the burning structure. Forty
girls were brought down to safety.
Mothers, fathers and other relatives,
literally mad with brief. stormed the
police lines at the morgue. Hystert
cal women fell in the streets and had
tn he carried away in the already
overburdened ambulances. Among
the bodies are more than so burned be-
yond all semblance of human form
and they will perhaps have to share
a common grave as unknown dead.