The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1922-02-02
HORRIBLE DISASTER
IN WASHINGTON
ROOF OF MOVING PICTURE
THEATER CAVES IN UNDER
WEIGHT OF SNOW.


moving picture show house in the
city of Washington caved in Saturday
night under the weight of the heavy
fall of snow. Up to Sunday night
the toll of dead had reached lot
persons when a final canvass was
made of the city hospitals and all
of the several emergency medical
stations which had been established
to care for the victims. This was
said to include everybody thus far
recovered from the ruins. The list
of injured totalled 134 and of these
ID were recorded as having sustain
ed serious hurts.
Of those in hospitals some sustain
ed injuries in many cases OF such
character that the icvtims, if they
recover, will be manned for life.
Ninety-two of the victims had been
identified when the force Of volunteer
workers, "a hours after the disaster,
approached the end of their long
search Of the debris.
Nine additional bodies of those who
had succumbed to injuries after res
cue lay in city hospitals.
The large majority of the victims,
both killed and injured, were resi-
dents of the city, although many came
recently from other places. Explora-
ton of the ruins went on unchecked
after dark but those in charge be-
ieved few additional bodies would be
found. Without regard to their own
risk soldiers, marines, sailors, police,
firemen and citizen volunteers had
fought their way beneath the wreck
age over practically the whole floor
SPACE of the auditorium.
The exact number N the .theater
when the steel and concrete span Of
the roof buckled and fell under its
three foot load of snow probably will
never be known. The more than
800 in the audience was roaring in
laughter at filmed comedy when the
roof fell on them like a blanket, car
rying down the front of the wide bal
cony in its path.
Normally the theater. has every seat
filed at that hour and nearly 1000
persons was its capacity. The same
unprecedented snowfall which brought
death to the venturesome few kept
the many at home. Street car traffic
had been abandoned and streets and
sidewalks were all but impossible
with drifts.
Recovered from the wreck and
horror of the ruined Knickelbocker
theater, pitiful stream of mangled
bodies, dead and living, flowed all
Saturday night and Sunday into the
lower rooms of q Christian Science
church a few hundred yards away.
A. the first word of the disaster, the
place was thrown open to the srickei,
felix's and the hundreds of others who
came to search for their dead or in
jured. And as the full weight of the
losses became known the dead mon
opolized the space, crowding the in
jured in the all too small rooms.
1t was merely a first aid station
for those taken crushed, but alive,
from the wreckage. They We're car
ried on stretchers over the slippery
pavement with lines of soldiers keep
ine the crowds back. Doctors and
nurses and women eager to bring
their sympathy and cheer to the suf-
fering or bereaved, waited in the
church. They tenderly washed away
the gray dust of crumbled concrete,
the CRIME and caked blood, blacken-
ed some times by hours of waiting
pinned under the debris until the res
cuers cut the victims loose. Band
ages were applied and then the in
jured were whisked away to hospi-
tai or home.
Sought by Relatives.
But the dead lay long in the double
rows in which they stretched across
the floor, lay until a fearful relative
or friend, husband or wife or father
OF mother, recognized the crushed
form at last. Up and down these
aisles of the dead walked those whose
fears had drawn them here because
of some one missing in the family
circle. Women already weeping in
certainty of what they must find soon
er or later beneath the kindly blankets
that shielded the sleepcrs made the
journey of sorrow many times before
they found what they sought. Men
with working faces leaned to draw
lack the coverings and then gasp
with short lived relief as they moved