Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 February 1910 — CRUSHED TO PULP IN GOAL BUNKER [ARTICLE]

CRUSHED TO PULP IN GOAL BUNKER

Victim Falls Into Chute and Body Is Mangled In Opening, PROTRUDING FEET TELL’STORY Body Recovered Only After Many Hours Wqrk in Removing Tons of Fuel —Had Been Dead Many Hours. New York, Feb. 1. —Nicholas Nledendock, 29 years old, employed on the night shift of the Yorkville Independent Hygenia Ice company at the foot of East Eighty-Second street, was taken from the coal chdte into which he had fallen Sunday night. The body was hoisted out of the chute after sixteen hours frantic effort on the part of the man’s fellow workmen to reach him in the peculiar position into which heYad dropped. Late Sunday night Charles Hahr, foreman of the night gang, noticed that the coal in the bunkers from which the large furnaces on the main floor are fed, was getting low. He signalled to Niedendock, who Is supposed to keep the coal ruiffiing free from the large room thirty feet above where it is stored. He received no response. This large room to which the coal is hoisted direct from the barges in the river, has a capacity of about 1,000 tons of coal, which is used to run the furnace. When Hahr got up to the room he found the chute, which was working, and which he had expected see empty because he was getting no coal below, filled to the brim with more than twenty tons; Niedendock was missing. Hahr at once became worried and rushing down below took a long iron pole and began to poke up from the lower end of the smaller chute to see what it was that had plugged it It was then that he discovered a pair of human feet sticking out of the main chute and he realized what had happened. The only method possible to save him, If he was still living, was to take all the coal from the chute. The police and firemen were Immediately called in and attempts at rescue started. The diggers finally uncovered an upraised arm. They were later able to get ropes under the arms of the victim and be was hoisted out. He had been dead for hours.