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Show FACE DEATH BY FIRE AND WATER Dynamite Used in Construction of Tunnel Under Lake Explodes, Causing Fifty Deaths. Building in the Lake a Mile and a Half From Shore is Burned, the Occupants Being Forced to Plunge Into Icy Waters. Chicago. Fifty-three workmen are dead as the result of a fire on Wednesday Wed-nesday that had its origin in a powder pow-der vault attached to the intermediate interme-diate crib in Lake Michigan,, used in the construction of a new water tunnel tun-nel connecting with the south side of the city at Seventy-third street. Ninety-five workmen were employed in the crib and in the connecting tunnel at the time of the fire. The tunnel was being built by the George W. Jackson company. The first section of the tunnel starts from the shore. The crib, a mile and a half out, marked the beginning of the second section being built still further into the lake. The two sections had not joined each other as yet. The superstructure of the crib was a barn-like building of two stories. It was surrounded by a narrow platform cr pier. Under it a shaft of steel and concrete, about twenty feet In diameter diam-eter ran down one hundred feet where the tunnel proper began. Normally there were from seventy-five to ninety men employed, working in three Ehifts of eight hours each. A tramway, consisting of strong steel cables from which hung buckets, gave physical connection with the ehore. There was also a telephone. In summer the men were taken to and from their work by the tug Morford, but in winter this was impossible. The men were housed in the crib and took their meals there. Supplies were sent out by the suspended trolley. So far as known, the explosion had its origin in a small powder house about 100 yards from the crib structure struc-ture built on foundations resting on the bottom of the lake. The detonation, muffled as it was by the crashing of floating ice against the crib, simply aroused the attention of workmen, and it was not until the heat of the flames and the stifling smoke penetrated the so-called "living "liv-ing room" of the crib and the tunnel beneath the waters of the lake that the full import of the disaster dawned upon the little colony of workmen cut off almost completely from assistance. The ice made it impossible for big vessels to reach the burning building, tut a small boat was placed in service ser-vice to carry the injured to the tug and rescue those who had plunged into the lake. After several hours of work, thirty-nine thirty-nine workmen were rescued. When the fire tug Conway had succeeded in quenching the flames, fifty-three bodies bod-ies had been carried to the shore and placed in morgues in south Chicago awaiting identification. |