Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1876 — Terrible School-House Disaster in Switzerland. [ARTICLE]

Terrible School-House Disaster in Switzerland.

The Journal des Debais publishes the following particulars of the frightful accident at a Christmas festival in Switzerland: The settle of the catastrophe was the school-house of the village of Helliken, containing about 700 inhabitants, and one of the manv villages in thefruitful valley of Fricithal. in the parish of Weggstetten, district of Rheinfelden,, near the Swiss salt-pits. It has always been the custom in most of the Swiss villages to collect subscriptions among the well-to-do inhabitants for distribution among the school children as Christmas gifts. Everything had been prepared on this occasion in the usual way, and the children had assembled at kix o’clock in the evening of Christmas Day outside the school-house, in the company of their friends and parents, waiting impatiently for admittance to see the Christmastree in order that they might receive their several gifts. At a little after six o’clock the schoolmaster commenced lighting the Christmas-tree. Having accomplished this, he opened the doors, when the crowd waiting outside rushed in one dense mass up the staircase leading to the room prepared for their reception. On their reachirg the top of the second staircase the beams supporting the flooring suddenly gave way, precipitating everything below, and by the violence of the shock causing the lower story to break down too. The interior of the edifice presented a horrible scene of confusion, human beings, beams, school-desks, chairs, mortar and stone being heaped up together. Tt was nearly seven o’clock wlien this occurred, and everything was in darkness, when the remaining population of the village, hearing the cries of the unfortunate children and their friends, hurried to the spot, some of them subsequently running off' for assistance to the neighboring villages of Zusgen and Wagsletten, the women and children of which were assem-■ bled for a similar purpose in their respective village school-houses. They set to work busily to clear the interior as soon as assistance arrived, extracting from the debris seventy-two corpses—those of fiftysix children, fourteen mothers pf families, and two men—besides about forty injured persons and children, some of them very seriously hurt. It is said that in many families only the father or the grandparents are left alive. The proprietor of the village lost his wife and three daughters by this frightful disaster. Two little school-boys, by creeping along the wall after the accident, got bold of the rope of the school-house bell, and pulling at it with all their might brought more neighbors to their assistance. The schoolmaster and the wife of tiie President of the village commune, the latter holding a child tightly in her arms, were discovered perched upon the wall on the projecting remains of the pulpit, and were rescued uninjured, after remaining three hours in their perilous position. The funeral of the dead commenced Monday, and presented a scene of indescribable desolation to the remaining members of the griefstricken population.