A FEARFUL HOLOCAUST.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3163, 8 March 1911, Page 5

A FEARFUL HOLOCAUST.

OUTBREAK AT AN ENTERTAINMENT DOORS AND WINDOWS CLOSED AND BARRED. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY PERSONS PERISH. [UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION-COPYRIGHT. J ST. PETERSBURG, March . An outbreak of fire occurred during a cinematograph entertainment at Bologoe. _ f Ninety persons were incinerated in the flames. Forty of these who were rescued were severely injured. (Received March 8, 12.59 a.m.) ST PETERSBURG, March 7. A number of the inhabitants of Bologoe, chiefly raihvaymen and many peasants, came to see some cinematograph slides dealing with the liberation of the -serfs, also to the last day of the carnival preceding the Lent show, given in a- wooden building with three doors, of which two were closed and the other barred, in order that only one person could be admitted a/t a time. The windows were also closed and the shutters were up. An explosion of benzine occurred, and in a few seconds the hall was _ a mass of flames. Twenty-five of the audience, -mostly men, retained their presence of mind, and escaped through the narrow passage, but the rest were burnt to death. A party of townsmen pluckily dashed into the building in a. desperate effort to save their wives and children, butnearly all the rescuers perished, and the fall of the roof completed the holocaust. The firemen were a long time in arriving and their efforts were fruitless. Thev could only help to -remove the charred beams and boards from the corpses, many of them being quite unrecognisable fragments, which the peasants lifted on to sleigns' by candlelight and took to the mortuary. There -were heartrending scenes . of parents with, bleeding hands, digging into the smouldering ruins. Ninety corpses have been extricated, hut it- is believed that 120 people have perished.