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Show !6ooininr SALTJAKE CITY UTAH OIL REFINING COMPANY SCENE OF FIRE WHICH ILLUIM-I ILLUIM-I NATES HEAVENS FOR MILES Lightning Strikes Tank Causing Severe Property Loss and Scatters Death In Heroic Twenty-two Hour Battle With Flames Salt Lake Two dead, two are said to be dying, and forty-six were injured, four seriously, in the fire at the plant of the Utah Oil Refining company in the northwest section of the city which started at G o'clock Saturday night and which was not placed under control until Sunday afternoon. Damage to the plant of the company is estimated by its officials at between $500,000 and $000,000. The dead are Walter Kommey, Jr, 19 years of age, son of Walter Kommey of the Fairmont apartments, and Sirs. Mary Ellen Clark Milner ; and George H. Larbee, 10 years of age, son of Mr and Mrs. George J. Larrabee, 1-19 West Seventh South street. Both men met death when a sheet of flame whicli preceded an explosion of the content! of a tank of gasoline distillate enveloped envelop-ed them, giving neither a chance to Qscape. Rommey and Larrabee met their death while they were working between be-tween the two largest tanks on the company com-pany property. The southernmost oi' the two large tanks was a mass of reo": flame and black smoke and every ef? fort was being, centered upon throwing streams of water on the large tanl to the north, which was, at the tim of the explosion, nearly emptied of iti contents. With at least twenty otherf who had been fighting the flames all night, they found themselves in th sump which surrounded the tank. Hauling on a heavy hose which ear1 ried a force of water sufficient to feir a man at a distance of more ttuin 10C feet, they crawled down into the Bumy and began to play streams of water upon the threatened tank. Both were working in opposite sections of tli sump, intent upon subdueing th flames and preventing their spread-Then spread-Then came the flash of the explo sion. Itomney, aeording to others who had been working by his side, was engulfed in flames. He had no chancf to escape and fell back into the sump; already filed by water. When hit body was found Sunday, there wa every indication that he had me4 death by scalding and drowning, as the water In the sump extremelj hot OLarrahe, working In the same sump northwesterly from Bomney, apparently appar-ently felt the full force of the sheet of flame which preceded the explosion. explo-sion. Only his skeleton was recovered recover-ed and identification by his fathei was established only by-bits of clothing cloth-ing that had been taken from the body by those who rescued it and by the fragments of a cap his father recognized. rec-ognized. At the morgue the father also al-so was able to make partial identification identifi-cation because of he size of the charred remains. Larabee's body was not In the terge sump when found, bust just west of the dike which makes the sump. That he was in water to his waist at the time of the explosion is plainly inli-cated. inli-cated. Flesh was clinging to the bones below the waistline, but the upper part of the corpse was entirley free of lesh. It was in this same section sec-tion that Mayor Neslen late yesterday yester-day afternoon picked up a charred skin bone that physicians say Is that of a human, and the finding of which lea-'1.0', to the theory that the death toll will be more than two. The bone 13 that of a human, according to Dr. J. J. Galligan, who said last night that an examination showed that it had only recently been filled with blood. The fire burned fiercely for twenty-two hours. During Saturday night firemen succeeded dn confining the flames to the wooden-top tank, which had been struck by lightning. However, How-ever, the flames spread to another 2,000,000-gallon container a short distance dis-tance away, which had been partly amptied. As the fire reached this tank it exploded and oil poured forth to be licked up by the flames and scatered with alarming rapidity. Ag the fire subsided Sunday afternoon after-noon a check was made of members of the city fire department, and it was said that all had been accounted for. Officials of the refining company com-pany had partially completed a check of their employees and it was stated that none were known to be missing. The flames which spread from the large tank after the explosion Sunday morning engulfed a frame cottage, located lo-cated east of the plant and facing North Third West street. In less than ,',n hour the small structure had burned burn-ed down completely and only a few smouldering rafters and scattered bricks from the foundation were left to mark the site. The house was own-.Ml own-.Ml by the compary and rented by an employee. The occupants moved out early in the day and the loss was estimated es-timated at $1500. |