Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1881 — FRIGHTFUL CALAMITY. [ARTICLE]

FRIGHTFUL CALAMITY.

Burning of the Hta* Theater, in Vienna* The burning of the Bing Theater, at Vienna, and the loss of nearly 700 lives, is one of the most appalling calamities of modern times. The fire originated on the stage. The curtain was still down at the time. The precise manner in which it started is not known. Some of those who were on the stage at the time, and who escaped, say that the fire was caused by the dropping of an oil-lamp among the scenery. Others assert that the fire came up from the engine-room, and was generated by the engine below the stage, which was supplying the theater with electric lights. However it was, when the flames made their appearance they did so so saudenly and were in such alarming proportions as to tnrow the stage people into an instantaneous and thorough panic. The stage bad but one exit to the street, and for this narrowplaoe of egress the entire 200 rushed. The flames were between the curtain sud this door, and this iact was the cause which prevented any oue trying to escape to the body of the house. No one on the stage was bold enough to face the flames in that direction, and so the great audience had no one to duly notify them of the tumble danger from which most of them might have escaped, had they neen warned in mneAt the stage ex t the actors got jammed and tne door was literally plugged up with human bodies, and it is believed that most of the number were burned to death. During all this time the flames were having it all their own way among the tinder on the stage. There was m the theater an iron curtain, which, when down, completely severed tb® stage from the audience. This iron curtaiu was up, and in tne panic on the stage was forgotten or cut off from approach by the flames. When tho fire behind tne drop became great enough to be seen through the painted fabric by the audience, they uaturallv supposed it the result ol the stage experiment with a calcium to be used during the bailet, and paid no further attention to it The flames attacked the dropcurtain from all points simultaneously, and it seemed to instantly disappear and the whole auditorium was in a thought’s time in the complete grasp of the fire, which spread like one vast sheet of lightning in a hurricane. What followed is indescribable. The people became demented aud fell upon one another like wild beasts. Some few got into the passages, but the hall was dark. Both gas and the electric lights were cut off. In the midst of all this terror, the noise of a terrible explosion showed that the gas tank had burst, and this time the flames burst through the roof and through most of tho windows, and the entire space between the walls of the large building was like a vast furnace in white heat, with living human bodies for coals. The sight attracted the whole town to the scene, and thoughtful people took thither elotoes, rope, ladders and axes. The great Turners’ fire brigade was soon at the theater and as sumed charge of the life-saving operations. By actual count it was ten minutes from the time the fire had possession of the auditorium before a single life was saved by outside assistance, and during all this time the people within the furnace were either burning up or trampliug one another to death. Men and women, crazed with heat and demented with the prospect before them, destroyed themselves by leaping ffom the front seats of the galleries into the seething abyss below. Up to this time none escaped except tho few wbo got from the stage, tne fewer who managed to stumble out through the darkened passage-ways from the pit to the street, aud tne few who dropped from the winnows of the first floor above the pit into the street. The Turners began at once knocking in the walls around the exits and dragging out the bodies piled thereby. In this way they managed to save several lives, but the flames soon drove tnem away from the walls. The sturdy follows then organized a blanket service and invited those at the windows on the high first floor to jump. Fifty persons answered the invitations, and the Turners caught every one of the entire fifty in outstretched blankets and saved them without mjury. There were no windows in the street walls higher than this first floor, aud it is hardly a matter of doubt that every occupant of the galleries was burned to death. When the fiftieth person had been rescued by the blanket service tho whole building was a mass of white fire, so hot that no near approach was possiblo. Alter that no hnman being got outside the walls, and the assembled crowds, vast iu number, were compelled to stand around and witness the most appalling and heart-rending scene of modern times. Bodies could be seou falling from the upper floors into the white lire below—some still and limp, as if lifeless, others in the wildest movements of agony. One was teen as if plunged from the highest part of the house. It was that of a man. and he fell headforemost, both arms crushed under the face. A Vienna dispatch of the 9th inst. says: Researches show that the upper gallery mubt have fallen into the pit, where the only remains found are small fragments of bones. Beyond a doubt 500 gallery tickets had been issued. Only 100 of these are known to have jumped from windows, and competent judges fear the loss of life will be found to be fully 700.