Evening star., 1951-07-08
Picture on Poee A-3.


flung hundreds of yards like giant
toys by the terrific blasts which
rocked the Port Newark area.
! At least nine persons. three Of
them firemen. were injured in
the explosion and fire at the War;
ren Petroleum Sales Corp.
About 100 tanks were blown
skyward. each punctuating large
spiralling grey-black cloud of
smoke with flashes of orange
flame.
One of the tanks struck a gaso-
line service station about three
quarters of a mile away. Another
hit printing company building.
Fifteen men trapped on the
burning waterfront were rescued
by a tugboat and landed unhurt.
The men were working at near
by candle factory when the ex-
plosions began.
officials said they believed only
about 10 workers were on duty at
the Warren company when the
detonations began shortly after
noon (EST).
Fifty workers from a nearby
chemical plant fed through a hail
of flying inch-thick metal from
the ruptured tanks.
Several railroad tank cars blew
up with the storage tanks, scat
tering wheels and parts. The con-
crete paving on Doremus Avenue
which runs past the area was
shattered to bits from the heat
and turned into a dirt road.
All available firemen in Newark.
largest city in New Jersey, fought
the blaze, biggest in the city's
history.
Newark Fire Chief Charles Bur-
nett said the blaze was brought
under control at 4::30 pm. but
that it would burn itself out all
night.
Chief Burnett said it looked ex-
actly like an atomic bomb blast.
BY chance. he happened to be in
specting an oil tanker docked
about half a mile from the area.
when the first explosions let go.
1T is the biggest fire I have
ever seen in my 81 years as q
fireman, Chief Burnett told re-
porters. 1T is the first time q
general alarm has been sounded
in the, history of Newark" He
said cause of the blast has not
yet been determined.
/ The fire chief wouldn't esti-
mate the damage. but said news
men would be safe in calling It
million dollar blaze"
135 Tanks in Yard.
There were 1875 tanks in the
spraWling yard At first, they
went up every four or five min
iutes. Later, the explosions be-
came sporadic.
Fire boats from New York.
Coast Guard craft and Navy Yard
tugs from Brooklyn stood by in
the Passaic River against the pos
sibility that the roaring gas fire
might spread to gasoline storage
tanks nearby.
The police, Coast Guard, Army
and Navy threw a Gordon around
the heavily industrialized area,
near Newark airport, which con-
tains a great number of big tanks
for storage of gasoline, oil, chem
icals and gas.
The flames, shooting like a
monster blowtorch hundreds of
feet into the air, were seen by
passengers on an excursion boat
around Manhattan six miles away.
and by TWA pilot just taking
off from LaGuardia Airport.
Smoke Seen IS Miles Away.
Flyers over Connecticut IS miles
away reported seeing the great
column of smoke billowing out of
the heart of the blaze.
Flremen, giving up as hopeless
the job of checking the squirting.
kissing gas tanks which continued
to explode from time to time, con-
centrated on wetting down the
surrounding areas.
An eyewitness said one tank
was flung three-quarters of a mile
into meadow. Another tank was
thrown completely through a
building of the International
Printing Ink Co., setting af1re
one of its tanks. A number of
trucks, some several hundred yards
from the center of the flames,
caught fire from the heat.
The whole western end of the