The Locomotive - Lighthouse Survival Blog

1894 i
THE
LOCO M OTIVE 119
mountains, so thai if the explosion had occurred a few minutes earlier the list of fatalities
would have been mure extensive.
(136.)— Two boilers exploded on June I9thal the Wells [toiler Mills, Wells, Miuu.
Engineer Oeorge Baer was killed instantly, and the property loss is about $5,000 or
|6,000. The mill is owned by W. II. Ketzlback & Co.
(137.) — On June 20th a locomotive boiler exploded at Hiawassa Station, Tenn., on
the Marietta & North Georgia Railroad. Fireman James Devers was instantly killed.
J. C. Devers, -engineer, J. C. Sanger, baggage-master, and A. I). Bentley, brakeman,
were badly hurt, Sanger fatally BO. The accident occurred at the foot of a mountain,
where the large pushing-engine, of which J. (J. Devers was engineer, hitched on a .southhound
train to pull it over the mountain. The engineer of the train had detached his
engine and gone over the mountain, and young Devers had come off the Biding and
backed the pushing-engine up to the train. Bentley and the elder Devers were on the
ground making the coupling, and Sanger was in the baggage-car. Young Devers was
hurled into this car, the front end of which was torn away by the explosion, and with-
out doubt he was killed instantly. Sanger was fearfully scalded, so that he died next
day. The elder Devers was considered to be fatally injured, but at last accounts he was
still living. It is said that one of the sheets of the exploded boiler was known to be
cracked.
(138.) — By a boiler explosion that occurred on June 21st near Louisa, twenty-five
miles from Ashland, Ky., Robert Jones was instantly killed, and his father, Jacob
Jones, was fatally injured. The building in which the boiler stood was completelv
wrecked.
(139.) — By the explosion of a boiler at Cottondale, near Pensacola, Fla., on June
22d, Mr. H. H. Rat lift* was fatally injured, so that he died in a few hours. The fireman,
who was also near the boiler, was dangerously injured, but it is believed that he will
recover.
(140.) — On June 27th a head blew out of one of the boilers in the Wilkeson
Elevator, in Buffalo, N. Y. Chief Engineer Robert Whalen was struck by a piece of
iron, and was also scalded. He will recover, however. We have not learned the ex-
tent of the property damage.
(141.) — A boiler exploded on June 28th in Stevenson's mill at Cayuga, Ont.
Engineer John Commer was killed instantly, and a workman named Franks was injured
so badly that he died on the following day. William Stevenson, Jr., was badly scalded
about the face, and Frank Lathrum was also scalded, but not so seriously. The mill
was completely wrecked, and the boiler was thrown 200 feet.
On August 2d, according to the Scientific American, a tack dropped into a picker
machine in a four-story mill in Philadelphia, causing a $70,000 fire, in the course of
which two firemen were killed and seven injured by a falling floor. The tack caused a
multitude of sparks to fly out of the picker, and these ignited the inflammable yarn into
which they fell and started a blaze that spread through the room very quickly.