False Cry Of Fire Starts A Stampede In Canonsburg, Penn., Moving Picture Show.
MEN TRAMPLE ON WOMEN
Audience, Composed Mostly of Miners, Makes Mad Dash Downstairs.
DRUNKEN MAN GAVE ALARM
Film Flared Up and This is Though to Have Made Him Think House Was in Flames
Special to The New York Times
CANONSBURG, Penn., Aug 26 -- a false cry of fire and a resulting panic led to the loss of at least twenty-five lives in the Canonsburg opera house, a moving picture theatre, in the village to-night. Some 800 persons, mostly Poles, were in the theatre at about 8:15 o'clock when a film flared up. this frightened someone in the audience, who gave the alarm.
A moment later there was a mad rush for the centre stairway leading from the Opera House proper, which was on the second floor above a row of stores. the stairway was narrow, and the first few down it stumbled, pushed by the panic-stricken crowd behind. The crowd piled down over them, and 500 or more reached the street after a mad scramble over the bodies of their fellow spectators. Besides the dead about fifty were injured.
Here is a partial list of the dead:
An unknown six-months-old infant.
BEAK, ARTHUR, 22 years old.
BIERD, FRANCIS, 13 years old, (colored.)
BULFESKY, ADOLF, 26 years old.
FIVE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER of Wilbur Lane.
FIVE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER of Tony Gledish.
HILL, MURRAY 16 years old.
INFANT DAUGHTER of Mrs. Green, Weaverstown, Penn.
KAY, GEORGE, 14 years old
KELLY, Mrs. HARRY, 39 years old, of Houston, Penn.
KLEGES, ---, 9 years old.
MARSHALL, Mrs. FREDERICK, 40 years old.
McKETTERICK, NELLIE, 25 years old.
MESTIC, PAUL, 12 years old.
NISH, WALTER, 12 years old.
RITTITER, SYDNEY, 26 years old.
ROBINSON, MANGELLA, 22 years old.
SYBERESKI, FRANK, 15 years old.
Two unknown women about 22 and 30 years of age.
Two unknown men about 25 and 35 years old.
WOLCOTT, ---, 12 years old.
YOUNG, Mrs. CALLIE, 35 years old.
News of the disaster filled the block around the theatre and a crowd of some 2,000 persons, most of the rest of the population of the town, besides several hundred miners who had come into town for a Saturday-night jollification with their week’s pay, many of them bringing their families.
Complaints were made by the crowd that there were still persons inside the theatre who might be injured, and there was a mad scramble up the stairs again, where the dead and dying lay. It was with difficulty that doctors who had been summoned from Pittsburgh, and who arrived by special trolley, could fight their way through the crowd. The local constables, two in number, were powerless to do anything to stay the panic.
When two volunteer fire department corps reached the theatre panic was still swaying the people. Thos of the audience who had escaped from the theatre and other spectators drawn to the scene were rushing about as if they were insane. No person, it seemed, was making any effort to aid the struggling mass within the structure. The firemen pushed into the building and practically threw people into the street.
As they regained their feet then ran, shrieking in terror, about the streets. As the firemen neared the bottom of the pile, they began to bring out the unconscious forms of the injured, and later came the dead. The dead were laid in a row along the sidewalk. Relatives fought and struggled to break by the guards to reach the bodies.
The opera house was recently examined by the local authorities, and the fire escape facilities were pronounces adequate. Large numbers of the audience made their escape by way of them to-night. It was patronized principally on Saturday evenings, when the people from the surrounding mines and farms came in by trolley. The population of the village, 3,000 persons, does not furnish enough to make entertainments on other evenings profitable.
The house itself was not overcrowded at the time of the false alarm, several of the merchants said, as it will seat 1,000 persons, and has been known to hold more during the coal strike period, when it was used for union meetings. The 800 persons there last night were well under its capacity.
The man who raised the cry of fire has not been identified. It is thought that the cry was probably given by a drunken man, as some of the miners who come to town on Saturday evening imbibe freely. To the drunken panic of others of the same sort is attributed to the mad trampling of women and children in the scramble to get down the narrow stairway.
While waiting the arrival of doctors from Pittsburgh, several of the injured were laid out on nearby lawns where they had been taken, and some of them were further injured by the rushing of curious groups of miners and others to learn who the injured persons might be, or from idle curiosity.
At 11 o’clock to-night twenty-eight injured had been taken to Canonsburg Hospital, eight of whom it was said would die. A score more of badly injured were taken to doctors’ offices near by. The wounded were found twisted and contorted all out of shape. Two women had their backs broken, being caught in the press and borne down face upward. Three small children were found in a recess a stairway, all dead, who had almost been un_lothed in the mad scramble to escape. Among the dead was George McPeake, a local business man who died heroically trying to lift two women above the crush. He was trampled until he was almost unrecognizable.