Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1906 — WRECKED BY DYNAMITE. [ARTICLE]

WRECKED BY DYNAMITE.

Explosion at Jellico, Tenn., Does $1,000,000 Damage. A terrific dynamite explosion at Jellico, Tenn., caused the loss of at least nine lives and more or less seriously injured not less than fifty people. Property damage estimated at $1,000,000 was done and the town of Jellico, Ky., -was practically destroyed. At least 500 people are homeless. Without exception every business house in the town is either totally wrecked or badly damaged. The union station of the Southern railway and the Louisville and Nashville railroad, located about 100 yards from the scene of the explosion, was shattered to splinters. This cut off all telegraphic communication and news of the explosion was handled by telephone. The explosion occarred upon the Kentucky side of Jellico, and in consequence every business house on that side of the town was wrecked. Not one was spared. A large number of residences located near the railroad on the Kentucky side were demolished. As a result it is estimated that one-seventh of the population of the two Jellicos is homeless. A car loaded with dynamite, and consigned to the Rand Powder Company, was brought in by the Southern railway from the direction of Knoxville and was sidetracked in the yards used jointly by the Southern railway and the L. &N. It is believed that the explosion was caused from spontaneous combustion in the car. The spot where the car stood is marked by a crevasse in the earth fully twenty feet deep and about thirty feet in diameter.

Word was received in Winnipeg,-Man., of a dynamite explosion, which occurred on the right of way of the Grand Trunk Pacific railway near Finmark, northwestern Ontario, in which five were killed outright and six injured. A gang of B’inlanders was engaged in tunneling, according to one story, when the premature explosion of a large quantity of dynamite occurred. •