People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1893 — LIVES CRUSHED OUT. [ARTICLE]

LIVES CRUSHED OUT.

Mine Men Killed During a Storm Near Joliet, ILL—Several Badly Hurt. Joliet, 111., April 8. —At 6 o’clock Friday afternoon the worst storm known for years in this region, the powerful gale being almost cyclonic in its violence, swept up the line of the great drainage channel of the Chicago sanitary district. At Romeo, a little village about 10 miles north of this city and 4 miles north of Lockport, the wind caused a strange and horrible accident. A cantilever crane on wheels, used to carry the dirt from the drainage canal in the section managed by Mason, Hodge <fc King and sublet to Dandridge & Hanger, started down the track and when at the end of the track the bottom of it was compelled to stop by the manner in which the track Is built. The top part, however, had gained such momentum that it could not stop and the enormous machine, weighing 280 tons, fell directly on the engine house. In this small house were fifteen men, nine of whom were killed and six injured. The unfortunates had gathered in the house to get out of the way of the coming storm, w’hich was accofnpanied by pelting hailstones. The cantilever is 90 feet high with arms 350 feet long and weighing 280 tons.

The killed are: Samuel Korus, foreman, of Joliet, and eight Italian workmen. The six injured men were Italians who Were employed in operating the crane and in other work of excavation. Every effort was made at the commissary, where the dead and wounded were taken, to care for the injured men. Doctors were called from Joliet and Lockport, but it was 11 o’clock before the wounded or dead were got out. The force of the fall damaged the crane so that it is a total loss. The tracks on which it runs extend north and south. The crane was on the south end of the track and had been carelessly left unfastened. The wind also blew over another cantilever a mile north, but no damage was done. The enormous crane which caused this horrible accident is one of the most remarkable pieces of machinery yet built for the work of canal digging. Its great height and vast reach of its arms render it of very important service in the work of excavation. Traveling buckets or cars move along its arms, going to the very bottom of the canal and then carrying upward and to the tops of the high spoi l banks the laden receptacles containing earth and rock. A number of these great machines are building for work along the canal of the sanitary district, at a cost, it is said, of 840,000 apiece.