Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 127, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1904 — KILLED IN TWO DISASTERS. [ARTICLE]

KILLED IN TWO DISASTERS.

Miners Fall to Death and Reservoir Bursts Killing Seventeen Persons. Thirty-live persons were killed Wednesday in two terrible disasters in the United States, eighteen in a Pennsylvania coal fill tie and seventeen through the breaking of a water reservoir in South Carolina, • The milling accident occurred in one of the shafts of the Delaware, wnima-aml WesternA'oinpauy's mines, about eight niTles-south of Wilkesbarre,~at Nantieoke. When the men Started- to work eighteen entered the lowering machine. A few fi-et below the siirfact 1 tin l steel cable of the carriage. connected with the hoisting engiin\ broke. Instantly the heavy car shot downward with frightful velocity and it and,the men were crushed at the bottom of the shaft, several hundred feet below. Frantic efforts were made at once to reach the men atid rescue them if any had survived. It was necessary to construct a temporary elevator, however, and every one of the eighteen miners was dead when their fel-low-workers reached the bottom of the shaft. Six feet of water was in the bottom of the shaft, and the men who were not killed by the fall were drowned. The accident was caused by machinery in the engine room going wrong. Details from the frightful disaster at Winston-Salem, S. C., where seventeen persons are known to have been drowned, are meager, hut it is believed - that many others lost their lives. Tlie Winston, reservoir, situated on top of a high hill, burst, and the water swept down the valley with terrific force, carrying everything before it. Houses, trees, animals, human beings, fences and crops were swept away by the onrushing flood. Houses were crushed like eggshells; trees were snapped off or pulled up by the roots. There was no chance of escape by anything in the path of the water. The residents of the valley had no warning of the approaching catastrophe, and men, women and children were killed almost liefore they realized what was happening.