The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-03-02
40 KILLED, AND SCORES INJURED BY INT BLAST
Entire Village Is Blown From Earth By
 Explosion


 NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J., March 1.-Forty persons dead, and hundred or more injured was estimated tonight as the toll of an explosion in the TINT plant of the Nixon filtration works Flames showered through forty build ings of an adjoining celluloid works and demolished the little industrial | the number killed was impossible.
 As many of the victims, dead and dying, as could be removed from the blazing ruins were taken to half dog en hospitals and hastily equipped emergency morgues. Their bodies were so mutilated and burned that only a few were identified. g.
 By night fall 12 bodies were report ed recovered and seven had been iden- tified tentatively. Spurred by reports of survivors that score still lay buried beneath the burning debris, soldiers joined fifemet,, state police and citizen yoliinteera in hoisting arc lights and be. ginning aH all night attack upon the |twisted masses of wreckage.
 Plant Blown From Earth The explosion occurred at II 30 a. rn in the ordnance saIyaging plant, Nj tyation works had been leased to the Ammouite company for the treatment of army TINT to be used as agricultural fertilizer. The building, two stories high. 300 feet long and of hollow tile construction, was literally blown from the earth along with the men believed to have been within it. The shock was felt for sixty miles, shattering windows, lifting roofs and toppling chimneys in many cities. On Staten Island build ings rocked as if in an earthquake.
 The single destructive blast crushed forty buildings of the Nixon company s celluloid novelties manufacturing works, which surrounded the TINT plant, and razed as if by shell fire the encircling dwellings of 200 employees whose little settlement was known as the town of Nixon.
 Shattered roofs and crumbled walls upon piles of flimsy celluloid sheets in every one of the Nixon buildings showered embers, blazing TINT, and boiling acid scattered by the explosion The blue flames of the celluloid with which all the structures were filled burst forth on the heels of the blast like huge blow-torch, destroying ev. eryOne and everything within a radius of several hundred feet.
 Screams and Cries MingIe
 The screams of men and girls pinned down by steel girders, crushed by fall ing walls of tile or caught beneath sev. cred pipe lines which showered them with nitric acid, mingled with the cries of housewives and children whose dwellings, only few feet from the celluloid works, came tumbling down upon them.
 Men, wounded and frenzied, with clothes burned off and bodies scorched black. ran out upon the road to New Brunswick, two miles away.
 A hundred soldiers hastily mObilized by Major A. $! Casad at the Raritan arsenal were speeded by automobile to the place of the explosion almost before the echoes had died away. Accom- panied by the arsenal's ambulanees and hospital corps, they were the ?rst to attack the flames and start rescue work.
 Later it was discovered that four of the arsenal high explosive magazines had been crushed by the explosion and the roofs of two others blown in. Four teen companies of firemen helped heck the flames, which for time tb atened to spread to the arsenars seOI< of pow uer warehouses.
 Many Heroic Rescues
 Doctors and nurses from hospitals in nearby cities were early on the scene. Numerous heroic rescues were recorded, nurses and soldiers working side by side amid the smoke and dense yellow fumes which all day rolled up from the ruins as tank after tank of nitric acid and ammonia burst.
 An hour after the explosion the vil- lage of Nixon and the 20 acres or more of buildings which had housed the ex- plosive works looked like sector of a battle front--no mans land. Only q few fragments of wall remained stand ing.
 For two miles the narrow road lead- Ing from the main highway was lined with automobiles, hub deep in mud past which rushed fire apparatus, ambu- lances, hearses, police and army cars, and people running and crying.
 Streteher bearers carried the dead and injured through crowds of rela- tives of the victims who besieged the gates of the plant. Telephones were being installed on every standing pole to replace the lines of communication that had been swept away by the ex- plosions. Airplanes with photogra- phers cireled overhead.
 Those uninjured who had seen the ex- plosion were unable to tell what caused it. Those who were in it and survived !. IL