The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1919-07-22
Victims Of the Flying Terror.

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Victims Of the Flying Terror.
CHICAGO, July 22.-Nine employees
of the Illinois Trust and Savings
bank were dead today, victims of the
flying terror.
i Two hundred clerks, bending over
their ledgers yesterday in the daily
rush to close their books, thought OF
nothing but their prosaic daily
ilabors. Messenger boys rushed back
and forth with books and papers.
There was the subdued hum of high
pressure work.
! A shadow f1oated across the big
skylight, two floors above-a smoke
cloud. perhaps. Then crash, a
binding light and detonation to
shatter walls. A shapeIess mass
hurtled through the glass and fell
fatty to the marble floor. 1t was a
mans body. Heavy machinery fol-
lowed and binding white flames be-
gan to lick the marble pillars and
the twisted steel beams OF the mon
ster which had turned quiet count
| ing room into a burning inferno.
Men and women workers is the
gallery surrounding the bank interior
and on the main floor looked up at
the crash. Screams arose 1mmedf-
ately and as the flames leaped up or
flowed along the floor in rivulets of
gasoline. hysteria broke loose.
Frightened screams of women rose
above the shouts of men. A terrific
rush for the two main exits followed.
Gallery workers leaped for the win
dows.
1t was long jump to the street.
but women took it. Only one girl
paused momentarily to clasp her
skirts tightly about her ankles rs
she leaped. Some Of the twenty thou
sand spectators attempted to catch
the jumpers, but succeeded only in
breaking their falls. Strangely only
a few were injured in those leaps.
Inside few remained, too terror
stricken to move or slow tn rpaiI7e
the danger. Some dived to tho big
vault and swung its door as far shut
as they safely could. Men slid under
their desks to escape the spr ,!ing
liquid fire. The flames caught them
and drove them out through other
rivers of fire.
Within a moment while marble
pillars were blackened, marble floors
were TANNED and there were blood
prints where scared bodies rubbed
walls and doorways.
Those who died in the bank were
pinned by the heavy motors or
framework of the "Wingfoot." Fire.
men, called when the dirigible first
burst into flame, rushed into the
building at once to drag back those
fallen on the edge Of the blaze Some
tof the rescued were SO Drowned or
tblackened by the fire that they could
not be recognized.
1t was a matter Of minutes from
the time the shadow f1oated across
the light until the quiet bank build.
ing had been turned into furnace
land men and women had perished
Chemicals quieted the flames shortly
and the bodies under the wreckage
were taken out.
The girls were partially identified
Their hats were those remaining in
the cloak room unclaimed
| Evelyn Meyers was one Of the
/ first to die. She was completing a
call at her switchboard when a
[cylinder of gasoline fell on her work
table. She was caught instantly in
a quickly killing flame. At her side
worked Myrtle Messenger. Myrtle
saw the quick death of her CO.
worker, tried to put call through
! to the fire department but the fire
, spread toward her, singed her hair
and drove her forth after one frantic
leffort to pull Evelyn's body away
from the blaze.
| Myrtle jumped through window
land landed safely.
! c. c. Hayford. running from his
private office at the first explosion,
bumped into man carrying a
woman.
MY God, it's raining he'll" burst
from the mans blackened face. The
figure he carried apparently was life
less.
A. W. Hiltabidel and F. /. Cooper,