火恐慌可以预防的。

火恐慌可以预防的。

毁灭的火环剧院的竞争nna last week, whereby over 700 persons were burned to death, is one of the most terrible calamities of recent years. It appears that the audience was assembling for the evening performance, and while the popular galleries were crowded to their fullest capacity, the more select portions of the house were but partially filled. An employe while lighting the stage lights, brought his torch in contact with one of the side scenes, and in an instant the entire scene was in flames. Communicating with the other scenery' instantaneously, the flames speedily enveloped the entire stage driving the workmen and the Firemen from their places. Among the first to desert his post was the workman whose duty it was to drop the iron curtain that shuts the stage from the audience, and as a consequence, this essential safeguard was not brought into use. As the workmen ran for their lives, the flames poured out into the auditorium, and the terrified audience became panic-sticken by the sight. A furious rush for the doors was made, but the impetuosity of the terror stricken crowd served to defeat the purpose each had in view, and to create a blockade that made escape impossible. Men, women and children were knocked down and trampled under foot in the surging mass, and lay in heaps piled one upon another, forming additional obstacles in the way of their escape from a fiery death. Meantime, the flames were advancing upon them, licking up the inflammable material of which the theatre was constructed, and poisoning the air tdl bre ithing became impossible. Many of the terror stricken crowd were suffocated long before the flames reached them. The horrors of those death struggles can never be known, for no witnesses lived to tell the tale. Those nearest the doors escaped, but a large proportion of those in the house met a horrible fate. The exact number lost will never be definitely ascertained, for many bodies were entirely consumed ; over 700 bodies have been recovered at last accounts, but the police reported 1136 persons missing. Some of this number were undoubtedly saved, while others whose fate has not been ascertained can only be accounted for as being among the unrecognized dead.

Naturally, this calamity ^has set our people to thinking upon the condition of our own places of amusements. Some of the daily papers have interviewed publx officials and theatre manager's upon the subject, and these agree in thinking that the the theatres are about as safe as they can be made.