Holiday Disaster

The fire may have been touched off by a holiday firecracker. It broke out early on New Year's Day in a waterfront lumberyard in Valparaiso, Chile's chief port and second city (pop. 240,000). Merrymakers gathered in thousands to watch as the flames roared through five huge stacks of lumber and spread to a few nearby buildings. It was a spectacular New Year's show. But within an hour, cheered on by their wives and children behind the police cordons, the firemen (volunteers, like all Chilean bomberos) seemed to be getting the blaze under control, and the watching crowds began to drift away again. Then the superintendent of an adjoining government warehouse rushed up to shout a warning: there were 1,214 Ibs. of dynamite stored in the building. Before he had even finished gasping out his story, flames inside the building reached the dynamite boxes, and it was too late.

There was a roar, said Fire Captain Heriberto Surrey later, "as if a ten-ton aerial bomb had burst." A great jet of flame plumed skyward, cremating two firemen directing hoses atop their telescopic ladders. Dozens of bodies were hurled through the air in all directions. Steel beams and chunks of concrete hurtled through the ranked rings of firemen, police and spectators. Three blocks away, a woman watching at an open window was beheaded by a piece of flying glass. Then oxygen tanks stored in the warehouse began exploding; gasoline and oil drums caught fire and burst, raining like napalm on the fleeing throng. Many were trampled to death. '"Their cries," said Fireman Surrey, "were terrible to hear." A stump-armed firefighter careened through a gutted street shrieking: "Where is my hand?" Then he collapsed.

All night and next day rescue parties groped in the smoking, reeking rubble to uncover the living and identify the dead. By week's end, 51 dead had been identified, including 26 firemen and a news photographer. Probably no complete list of the dead could ever be compiled. Weeping relatives ransacked the hospitals, where many victims lay unconscious, so mutilated and thickly bandaged as to be unrecognizable.

It was Valparaiso's worst disaster since 4,000 lost their lives in the earthquake of 1906. Said President Carlos Ibanez, after hurrying to the scene from Santiago: "There are no words to describe it." He called on Congress to vote aid to the injured, numbering at least 500, and to the relatives of the dead. Next day, amidst national mourning, he led the funeral procession from the cathedral to Playa Ancha cemetery on a hill overlooking the disaster scene. Then he ordered the arrest of the district highway engineer who had stored the dynamite in the warehouse without notifying firemen and local authorities.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.