Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1900 — DIE IN MOLTEN GLASS. [ARTICLE]

DIE IN MOLTEN GLASS.

.DISASTER CAUSES THE DEATH OF THIRTEEN BOYS. Over One Hundred Person. Injured and Many of Them Fatally—Roof of Factory Overlooking Football Game Collapses—Scene of Terrible Suffering. The collapse of the roof of a glass factory in San Francisco from which a large ’ number of people were watching a football game between Leland Stanford and the University of California, caused the death of thirteen people and serious injuries to nearly 100 others, several of whom are fatally injrfred and many others will be maimed for life. Those who were injured fell into the furnaces and seething glasspots below and terrible torture was suffered in many instances. About-twenty minutes after the game had commenced, and without any warning, a corner of the roof collapsed, carrying with.it in its fall all those who had been standing Luckily the whole roof did not give way or the disaster would have been even more fearful. As it was at least 200 fell into the interior of the works, and a few more in the rush that ensued in the other portion of the place to , get down were hurled to the ground. The portion of the roof which collapsed was the covering over the ventilator bars at the apex of the building and was not constructed to sustain any heavy weight. The horizontal timbers in the center, corresponding to the ridge pole of an ordinary structure, broke near the center, and the light framework under,neath, with its covering of corrugated iron, turned inward, forming a chute through which the men and boys were precipitated into the furnaces beneath. Most of those killed or injured were boys between 9 and 16 years of age. Nearly all of the victims had their skulls fractured or limbs broken and sustained serious internal injuries. The factory has been shut down for some months, and for the first time the fires in the furnaces had been relighted and in all the vats glass in its various forms was being melted and refined. Into these seething pots of molten matter the victims of the accident were hurled, some being bodily cast into the fires, others falling into vats the matter was glowing, and still others being incinerated by falling into those huge pots where the glass, seething and bubbling, was being purified. Some of these were killed instantly and others wore roasted slowly to death, their position, being such that htdp couhFnot be given them. The few who were so fortunate as to escape death by the furnaces suffered injuries by falling upon piles of glass slag with sharp, jagged edges, which lay by the sides of the vats, or by falling upon the floor and, stunned by the shock, being scorched and burned by their proximity to the intense heat. Seldom has an accident happened wherein the victims who were not killed have been subjected to such tortures, and the cries of those who in their helplessness and the inability of those to succor them were being burned to death were piteous to hear. To add to the terrible calamity the falling of the timbers into the fires set the building ablaze. The fire was not put out until the greater part of the factory had been consumed.