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Show p- Adventurers' 1 Club Red Death and Black Panic By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter MILTON AUERBACH of Atlantic City, N. J., brings us today's thrill, and it happened to him on his first day back at work after being mustered out of service after the war. The war didn't give Milt much of anything to write home about, but the minute he got home things began to happen to him. That's the way it always is. Adventures happen most often right in your own back yard. This one started with a cry and a roar. On January 7, 1919, shortly before five o'clock in the afternoon, a woman thrust her head out of a window win-dow on the fourth floor of the Sauer building on Perm avenue, Pittsburgh Pitts-burgh and screamed one word, "Fire." There was a moment of quiet. A fireman standing on the sidewalk turned and started to run toward his engine house. He had taken two steps when Hell burst its boundaries boun-daries and began roaring in the streets of Pittsburgh. Celluloid Films Exploded. There was a loud, shattering BOOM! A gush of smote from a first floor window and a bright red flash streaked out from somewhere between the first and second stories. A man's body shot out of a window as though it had come from a cannon head first. A man standing in front of the building was thrown halfway across the street. Flame ran through the whole edifice blazed fifty feet from the top of the roof. Highly inflammable celluloid films stored in the building had exploded and turned the whole place into a funeral pyre in which nine people eventually lost their lives. Milt Auerbach was in an office on the sixth floor. There were eight of them there altogether salesmen and stenographers busy at their respective desks making out reports and finishing up for the day. They heard the terrific report and made a dash for the door. "When we opened the door," says Milt, "were were enveloped in A SHEET OF TLAME. We turned, then and ran to the windows facing the street. By the time we reached them the flames were at our heels." They Were Jumping to Death. Milt saw one of the girl stenographers escape through the window. Another one followed her. It was Milt's first day in the office. He thought there must be a fire escape down which the girls were fleeing. The porter Holding the Girl, He Stood on a Narrow Ledge. - ';r?bing out of the window now, and Milt told him to hurry so he could follow. Then the porter was gone and Milt started out the window after him. He pushed out his head and recoiled in horror. There was NO FIKE ESCAPE there! Down below on the sidewalk side-walk he saw the bodies of the two girls and the porter. Another girl tried to push by him. Milt caught her and she fainted. Still holding the unconscious girl in his arms he climbed out of the window win-dow and stood on a narrow ledge. With his free hand he clung to the window sill. Inside the office the remaining salesmen were huddled in a corner the flames had not yet reached, shaking hands and saying good-bye to one another. Fire engines began to arrive in the street below. They spread a net, but from the sixth floor it appeared to be about the size of a dime. No one dared jump, Milt says, because it would have been impossible im-possible to gauge the distance to that net correctly. Other trucks were unreeling hose lines. Still others were raising ladders. But the hose lines didn't hold out much hope. Water would be of little help to the people trapped in the building. The ladders were their only hope. He Couldn't Get to the Ladder. They were hoisting a ladder right under the ledge to which Milt was clinging, but to Milt's dismay they had it on the wrong side of the trolley wires and could not lean it against the building. The unconscious girl was getting heavy in his arms. His other hand, still clinging to the sill, was tired and just about ready to lose its hold. Milt looked inside and noticed that the flames didn't seem to be coming com-ing any farther into the office. There was a little space in there that they did not cover. He bundled the unconscious girl back In through the window and followed, himself. In other parts of the building, dense fumes were driving people to the upper floors. Fire began to spread to the building next door. Everywhere Every-where in the burning structure people were clinging to the windows as Milt Auerbach had, and the streets were filled with people shouting over and over again the monotonous warning refrain, "DON'T JUMP!" On the sidewalk, dozens of limp, motionless bodies testified to the soundness of that advice. Few of those who jumped had landed in the nets. Now firemen were fighting their way inside the building. build-ing. Two men, their clothes ablaze, but still alive, were carried out. A little farther in they found the body of a woman, her hair gone and her clothing in ashes, just a few feet from a stairway that would have led her to safety. Milt Was Almost Electrocuted. Meanwhile, up on the sixth floor, Milt Auerbach waited impatiently for the firemen to raise their ladder again. "At last," he says, "a ladder did reach our floor. A fireman came up and relieved me of the girl in my arms. He carried her down to safety, and then the men followed." That trip down the ladder was almost as bad as the suspense of waiting for it. It swayed alarmingly as Milt started down it. The rungs were far apart. Every step Milt took made him feel as if he were missing his foothold. Down he went. The bottom of the ladder was set in the top of the fire truck, and in order to get down from it Milt had to rest his hand on the back of one of the horses that drew it That's where Milt got one final thrill. For as he put his hand on the horse's back an overhead electric wire broke. It fell, hit the horse, and sparks flew. Just as Milt landed on the ground, the horse fell beside him STONE DEAD ELECTROCUTED! Nine people died in that fire, and many more were injured. The girl Milt had held on the window ledge was in a coma for months as a result of her ordeal. But Milt was lucky. He came out without a scratch. WNU Service. |