125 Deaths

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 58, Issue 89, 17 May 1929, Page 9

125 Deaths

By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.

Australian Press Association.

THE CLEVELAND DISASTER Persistent Report Of Man With BIow Lamp FAULTY FIRE DOOR

iKeceived This Day, Noou i NEW YORK, May 16. A message from Cleveland statcs tliat tho death list from the hospital disaster is now 12 5 and iiu-easing liourlv. Yarious inquiries have been instigated by tlie city, county, State and Federal authorities. There are persistent roports that a man was scen nsing a blow torch in the vicinity of tho rooin where the Xray filins were stored, and this is being thoroughly lnvcstigated. hut in tho lucantime the only dcfinite fact regnrd ing a possible causo of sitch extensive fatalitie.s was revealed by the Citv Investigating OoniniisMon which discorcrcd a faultv lire door in the clinic's X-rav ronm where the catastrophe originated. Dr. H. L. Rockwood Health .Comniissioner. and liead of tlie Commission, declared tliat had tlie door worked it would have -slmt o(F tlie room from tlie reinamdor of the hnilding and caused th? deadly poison gas to he forced to tlie strppt tlirough tlie ventilator. Another Cleveland rcport statcs that victims who fought. for their lives tlirough the night- suecumbed oue after another to tlie eirects of the gas. and to tlav, six stalf phvsicians died, ineluding Dr. .Tohn Phillips. eo-fnunder of the elinie and a nativo of Welland, Ontario.