New-York tribune., 1916-07-31
CITY ROCKED OUT
OF BED BY BLAST
Continued from page l

vice broke Gown because Of the I'M
meAse demand upon ths ehshahses' rol
all practical purposes New jersey ""S
cut tou from New reSE, Forty-second
Street had as mueH Trouble in getting
PARK Row as ordinarily would. pc had
IN getting transeontinentaI connee-
items,
Lack of Information.
The best information that any one
could obtain for hours was something
had happened in New Jersey, and IL was
not until nearly dawn that any appre-
ciable part of the city knew with rea-
sonabe accuracy what had occurred.
Then the wholesale section OF tne
city. and the more exclusive retail sec
tions further uptown, were under guard
of every available man against possiple
looters, for more than Sl,OOO,OOO worth
of windows had gone and property
worth fortunes was exposed TO those
who might be disposed to loot.
Fortunately there was little of this,
for the type that would loot was
shocked. as was all the rest of New
York. and before it recovered the police
and the owners of property affected
had taken steps to protect what had
been exposed.
Fifteen minutes after the first shock
was felt in New York hundreds OF
screaming, struggling, fear-crazed men
and women, none Of them fully dressed
and carrying or dragging children,
fought their way up the double stair
way of the Williamsburg Bridge, at
Clinton and Delaney streets, to the
- r0adUaW
Across the plaza of the Queensboro
Bridge. from the north, south and
west gesticulating, whte-faced
crowd of the cosmopolitan residents of
the district sought the roadway of the
uptown bridge.
Avenue A, First Avenue and Second
Avenue were filled with people aroused
by the roar and rumbling that fol-
lowed. Uncomfortable panic seized them
as Italians, in the fashion followed in
bomb explosions, fired volley after vol
lev from revolvers out Of tenement
windows.
When the Clinton Street station
police reserves finally fought their way
through the lower East Side men and
women were found, their bodies thrown
across the bridge guard rails, with up
turned eyes, praying in the hour that
they thought was to end the world.
The doomsday fear found ready vic
Tins among the Italians on the Queens
boro Bridge. Men and women, prayer
books or rosary beads clasped in their
hands, were crossing themselves and
shouting in Italian, "God have mercy
on my SOUL"
Picking their way through glass-lit-
tered streets. the upper East Siders'
fear was augmented by the rushing
about Of fire engines and trucks. There
was a one-alarm fire at Sixty-third
Street and Third Avenue, and few
minutes later a two-alarm fire was re-
corded from Forty-third Street and
Second Avenue. Neither fire gave the
fremen any serious trouble.
Nurses and interns in the lower part
of the city were kept busy dealing with
panicstricken patients and attending
late homegoers who had been cut by
fragments Of falling glass. Some OF
! the patients feared that the city was
under bombardment, but the general
first thought was that the subway had
been blown up.
In Beth Israel Hospital, at 70 JEFF
| ferson Street, so patients were thrown
/ into CONSERVATION by the first violent
cOncussion, which shattered many WIN
dows. While Superintendent Louis j.
Frank and his staff were calming the
frightened patients scores OF residents
of the neighborhood ran TO the hos
pital as place of refuge.
Patients were thrown into mysteries
in Gouverneur Hospital by the first de-
! tonation and the shattering of falling
glass, and before the nurses had sue
ceeded in calming them rush Of mon
and women from the neighborhood beg
ging for shelter crowded the dispen-
sary.
The Peoples, st. Vincent's, Volun-
teer and Hudson Street hospitals sum-
moned their entire stats to quiet
frenzied patients, TO calm frightened
people of the neighborhood, and treat
| those who had been cut by crashing
glass or been thrown from their feet
or beds.
Broadway was as nearly asleep as
it ever is when the crash came. In
the big hotels practically all the
guests, even 70 the night owls, had
turned in, and in Times Square Louis,
the newsboy, was complaining to a
friendly cabby that every one was out
of town and the town dead, anyway.
The explosion seemed to be around the
corner IN Seventh Avenue. That was
the end OF quiet on Broadway.
Erop, tho eo-called clubs IN sonn NJ