Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1895 — FALL WITH A FLOOR. [ARTICLE]

FALL WITH A FLOOR.

Two Hundred People Maimed at an Elks’ Social Session in At antic. More than 100 men and women were seriously hurt at the social session tendered by Atlantic City, N. J., lodge to the visiting Elks at the Baltic Avenue Casino Wednesday evening. The session had just opened, and only one of the speakers had been heard, when, without the slightest warning, the building, which has not b-en used for several years, collapsed, and fully 1,000 persons were thrown to the floor beneath. Many women, the wives of the visiting Elks, went down in the ruins. Fully 200 persons who were on the first floor of the building, and immediately beneath ihe banquet hall, were crushed beneath the timbers, and lay helpless. One man was killed in the crash and many were desperately wounded. The fact that all the electric lights went out at the time the building gave way, added to the eoiffusfiin. An alarm was immediately turned in and the city’s force of 200 firemen and every available police officer in the city were calle 1 to thfe icene as a hospital corps. The police .ambulance und carriages of every description were utilized to convey the injured, to .heir hospital and to the hotels. When the police and firemen arrived on the scene the, excitement was intense. Within a few minutes they succeeded in clearing the space in the immediate neighborhood of the building and placed ropes around to keep the crowd back. In the meantime the firemen had set to work to extricate the wounded from beneath the mass of timbers, and they were aided in their work by the hotelkeepers and residents near the scene. Every house was thrown open for the reception of the injured and every available conveyance was pressed into service to carry them to their hotels.