Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1920 — GREAT FIRE DAMAGE IN CORK [ARTICLE]

GREAT FIRE DAMAGE IN CORK

Flames Sweep Irish City, Doing Damage Estimated at 916,000,000. More than three hundred buildings were destroyed by fires In Cork, Ireland, Saturday night and Bunday, laying waste to a large part of the city. Allegations are made that police auxiliaries in Cork, maddened by the killing and wounding of comrades by ambushed Sinn Feiners Saturday, loosed the Are demon on the city. Estimates of the loss run as high as $16,000,000. Hours of terror were spent by the people of Cork Saturday night, the wildest disorder prevailing throughout the city. Several lives were reported lost and dispatches said two brothers named Delaney were called from their homes and shot, one of them fatally. Two districts of Cork were swept by the flames. In the business district, along St. Patrick’s street, from Cook to Maylor, hardly a shop was left unscathed. This was the shop ping center of Cork and in untroubled times boasted many prosperous stores. .South of St. Patrick’s street the fire ran uncontrolled along Winthrop street anTT'bther narrow thoroughfares as far as Old Oeorge street. Thus an area of three blocks In this part of the town was reduced

to masses of debris. It vas not In this district, however, that the heaviest loss of the Are was centered. The magnificent city hall of Cork, on the southern end of the Parnell bridge that spans the River Lee, also was laid in ruins* In addition the Carnegie library/ Just across Anglesea street, to the west, was burned, and the Corn Exchange, just behind the city hall and to the south, was at least partly destroyed. Reports state that Albert quay, lying along the southern bank of the river, is a mass of desolation. Exact details of the events leading up to the conflagration of Saturday night have not been received ..here. Some reports tend to question the accuracy of earlier dispatches, but otthers repeat the story told in first reports. All indicate that the disorders and fires had a direct connection with the attack made on the lorry carrying police auxiliaries. Some newspapers are frankly skeptical of these reports and suggest that the fires might have been caused by the explosion of stored explosives, such as were found Saturday In the city of Dublin. Others indicate their belief that the fires were a reply to the establishment of martial law In southwestern Ireland, and It Is remarked that dispatches have not given proof that the fires were set by men bent on reprisals.