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Show EXPLOSION CAUSES LOSS OFILLIONS THREE KILLED, SCORES INJURED AND SEVERAL SMALL TOWNS ARE WIPED OUT. Ammunition Awaiting Shipment to the Allies and Stored on Island in New York Bay Destroyed Either Intentionally or by Accident. New York. Property loss estimated at $25,000,000 was caused early Sun-I day by a series of terrific explosions of ammunition awaiting shipment to the entente allies and stored on Black Tom island, a small strip of land Jutting Jut-ting into New York bay off Jersey City. Three are known to be dead and at least five are missing. Scores of persons per-sons were injured, some of them probably prob-ably mortally. The detonations, which were felt in five states, began with a continuous rapid fire of small shells, the blowing up of great quantities of dynamite, trinitrotoluol tri-nitrotoluol and other high explosives, followed by the bursting of thousands of shrapnel shells, which literally showered the surrounding country and water for many miles around. Fire that started soon after the first great crash, which spread death and desolation in its wake, destroyed thirteen thir-teen of the huge ' warehouses of the National Storage company on Black Tom island, in which was stored mer chandise valued between $12,000,000 and $15,000,000. The cause of the disaster had not been determined. Officials of the National Na-tional Storage company and the Lehigh Le-high Valley railroad, which, also suffered suf-fered heavily through loss of property, declared, however, that reports to them showed a fire started shortly after 1 o'clock Sunday morning on a barge belonging to an independent towing company that had been moored alongside a dock used by the railroad company to transfer ammunition shipments ship-ments from trains to vessels in the harbor. The barge, it was said, was there without authority of either the railroad rail-road or the storage company. Edmund L. Mackenzie, president of the National Storage company, declared de-clared that the plant of his concern was valued at $7,000,000, while the contents of the warehouses probably were worth $10,000,000. Several officials and employees of the storage company have been arrested, ar-rested, accused of having illegally permitted per-mitted explosives to be stored where human life was endangered. Every window in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, on Bedloes island, opposite Black Tom, was broken, and the main door, made of iron and weighing almost a ton, was blown off its hinges. The statue itself, however, was not damaged, except from the rain of shrapnel which bespattered it. |