Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1898 — DEAD AMID DEBRIS. [ARTICLE]

DEAD AMID DEBRIS.

Ten Men Killed by Collapse of u Tlieuter at Detroit. With a crash, tho noise of which was heard for blocks, the Wonderland Theater in Detroit tumbled into ruins at 2 o’clock Saturday afternoon. The roof had suddenly collapsed. At that time thirty-five men were at work in various parts of the unfinished structure. There was no warning of the calamity, and some of the victims perished instantly. Nearly every workman was swept down into tho theater pit; tho top gallery was crushed upon tho lower gallery, forming a sort of fatal tobogugan, down which slid liroken steel girders, planks, timbers, bricks and a groat quantity of cement This avalanche remorselessly carried with it a struggling mass of men, who were dashed down into the pit below’. Ten were killed outright, another afterwards died, and very few escaped injury. The cause of the catastrophe, while not definitely settled, scums to rest between too much weight in the roof nnd faulty steel beams used iu its construction. The top of the roof was of cement, al>out eight inches thick, and many builders lean to the opinion that this was too weighty for the supporting steel work. Others say the fault lies iu the steel work.