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Show MM HURT IN SUBWAY PANIC NEW YORK IS SCENE OF MAD RUSH WHEN SCORES ARE TRAMPLED ON Electric Lamps Explode Causing Injury In-jury to Many Passengers; Guards Bar Door When Smoke Adds To Confusion New York. At least seventy-five persons were injured, two of them probably fatally in a mad panic which swept a crowded east side subway train as it was about to leave the Grand Central terminal station. A blown fuse, followed by a series of electric lamp bulp explosions, was reported to have been the cause of the accident. The train, literally jammed with humanity, came to a sharp stop a block from the terminal. Men, women wo-men and children massed into every one of the cars, were swept from their feet in confusion, which grew to panic proportions when the cars began to fill with stifling smoke caused by burning insulation. A short circuit had occurred, causing caus-ing the motorman to halt the long string of cars. When he attempted to start up again every light bulb in the train exploded. This was the signal sig-nal for the panic which sent screaming, scream-ing, fighting men, women and children child-ren surging toward exits and seeking to escape from their cagelike imprisonment im-prisonment by smashing windows. Scores were knocked to the car floors and trampled. The confusion was added when guards prevented opening of emergency doors. The lounge and several salons of the nearby Hotel Vanderbilt were converted into emergency hospitals, where twenty-five persons received treatment. Thirty others were removed to Bellevue hospital. The last serious subway mishap of a similar nature ocucrred on the east side subway December 16, 1923, when 150 persons were iujured in a panic which started with a fire which sent choking gases through the cars. It later developed that forty-pne persons received treatment in the Vanderbilt hotel. The entire personnel of the Vanderbilt Van-derbilt went into service, carrying the injured to lounges, salons and into the dining room. When Policeman George Deno arrived ar-rived at the Thirty-fourth street subway sub-way exits he saw burly men knocking knock-ing half hysterical women aside in their mad plunges for freedom. He tore off his uniform coast and waded into the crowd, knocking down five of the men he had seen jostling women. |