SCENE OF UTTER DESTRUCTION.
A Correspondent Tells What He Saw at Pine City and Hinckley.
HINCKLEY, Sept. 4.—The special train sent out by the citizens of Minneapolis, bearing supplies and medical relief to the suffering people of Hinckley and vicinity, had on board eleven physicians and surgeons, with a supply of drugs and instruments, and fifty canvas cots.
Pine City was the main objective point, for it was here that the relief supplies were to be distributed and the temporary hospitals had been opened. The medical committee was met at the station by the heroic little wife of Dr. Barnum, the local physician, who, with her husband, had been working day and night from the time the first victims were brought in until both were almost completely worn out. “Oh, we’re so glad you’ve come!” almost sobbed the little woman to Dr. McDonald as he stepped from the train.
The platform was crowded with inquisitive but glad-looking people, with blackened and scarred faces and bandaged hands and arms, bearing pathetic witness to the terrible experience.
Near the edge of the platform rested a coffin box, in which were enclosed the remains of what was once the General Passenger agent of the Winnipeg and Duluth Road, O. Rowley. The poor fellow was one of the passengers on Engineer James Root’s ill-fated train, and the body was found yesterday morning a short distance from the burned train, but so charred an disfigured that its identity was only established by the name printed on the inside of the burned fragment of a linen collar. He had been in the habit of coming down from Duluth every Saturday to spend Sunday with his family at Merriam Park, and was on his way home when he met his death.The United Press correspondent found that, notwithstanding the reports received, matters relating to the numbers and condition of the wounded and the necessity for supplies had been greatly misrepresented, so far as Pine City was concerned. Instead of 200 wounded to be cared for, there were a bare 20, and many of these had not been seriously hurt. All the injured have been brought in, too, and it was learned that even those at Duluth scarcely outnumbered those at Pine City. It appears that it was a clean-cut case of either life or death. Most of those who escaped did so without any physical hurt, while those who were unable to do so perished.
The most severe and dangerous cases in Pine City had been taken to the improvised hospital at the rink, and here nine of the medical relief set to work while the other two went on to Hinckley. Only about twelve persons were being cared for at the rink, but all in all they presented a pitiful and heartrending spectacle.
The poor, blackened, blistered faces, the burned and sightless eyes, all parched and swollen lips, feebly moaning all the time, and bandaged hands, tossing in restless agony to and fro, mad a sight that might well weakened the strongest man. If the individual experiences that each had passed through were to related with all their graphic and heartrending details, it would make such a volume as few people could bear to read.
Hairbreadth escapes and providential interpositions were told until one felt that the miracle was not that this one or that one was saved, but that any could possibly have escaped. Nearly all of the patients were Scandinavians.
None of the cases at the rink are considered especially dangerous except two. The first is that of Mrs. Weaterland, who saw her husband and baby drowned before her eyes. The intense mental shock and the inhalation of flames and hot air have rendered her case extremely doubtful. The other is that of Mrs. M. A. Greenfield, who was terribly burned about the abdomen, and is a raving maniac besides.
Mrs. Matilda Oleson is another dangerously burned patient. She lost five children and her husband, but jumped into the river and managed to save her own life as well as that of a man nearly suffocated, whom she covered with a blanket. Mollie McNiell of Hinckley related what was, perhaps the most thrilling and providential escape on the record in that day of thrilling escapes. When the fire began to sweep over the town, determined to save what little she could, and not realizing the awful danger which she would encounter, she carried with her three dresses, two hats, and a well-filled satchel.
As she rushed from the house the smoke was so dense that she could scarcely see a rod ahead, and the flames were leaping behind her, but she made for the direction of the St. Paul and Duluth tracks. As she crossed a wagon bridge that spanned the road near the tracks, the entire structure shot up into a mass of flames. She threw her satchel away and pressed on toward the tracks.
Once there, the heat was so intense that she had to drop the dresses and the hat soon followed. On she sped between the rails, the ties burning beneath her feet, and two seething walls of fire leaped along beside her. Again and again she stumbled over dead bodies in the way. At one place she saw a man kneeling in the attitude of prayer, but stone dead and burning.
At another, a mother and four children fell exhausted in her path never to rise again. At length, after she had run about a mile and was ready to drop with the heat, she ran plump against Engineer James Root’s train, which was just about to back up, after having taken on its load of terror-stricken fugitives.
The fireman pulled here into the cab, and when she regained consciousness she was removed to one of the coaches. Had she been a moment later the train would have backed away from her and she would have perished.
The rest of the ride everybody in the Northwest knows to-day, but not all of the sorrowing scenes that took place within the car. Miss McNeil says she saw one man, crazed with fright and despair, kiss his wife good-bye and then deliberately plunge headlong through the glass window out into the flames.
Leaving the hospital scenes, the reporter betook himself to the square, where the State had pitched fifty army tents as shelters for the homeless. Not more than a dozen of these were occupied, however, and the mental and bodily condition of those within was in marked contrast to the sufferers he had left. None of these had lost relatives, although all had lost homes and property. They took their losses cheerfully, however, and were plainly thankful to have escaped as well as they did.
Leaving Pine City, the United Press correspondent went to Hinckley, thirteen miles distant, in a handcar. Words utterly fail to describe the desolation that marked the country on every hand as he neared the place of the terrible disaster. As one man expressed it, “it looked as if no one had lived there for a thousand years, and never would again.”
Not only was every green and living thing licked up by the flames, but the soil itself was blackened and consumed, and the earth torn up in great holes and patches. Nothing but a dreary, desolate waste.
Yesterday morning, a few miles the other side of Hinckley, a little live calf was picked up. How it came there, or how it could ever have escaped in such a fire-swept region, no one knows.
Not a vestige is left standing of the town except the charred walls of the schoolhouse and roundhouse, and a couple of iron safes.
Prof. Hayes of Hinckley schools found by actual count 129 corpses. By this time most of them have been buried, but when the correspondent came upon the scent they were lying in two great heaps—one containing ninety-seven bodies, piled indiscriminately to a height of five feet, naked, charred, blackened, torn, most of them are absolutely beyond recognition, and those that have been identified are only so by some trinket or mark upon the linen. Trenches were being dug, and into these the bodies were being tumbled, some in boxes, some without a covering of any kind. It seems terrible—even disgraceful—but the hasty work is hardly to be wondered at when it is known that nor more than five or six men were there to perform the offices of burial. It was only toward evening that friends and relatives began to come in from Duluth and other points to assist in the sad service. Other bodies were being found constantly, in groups of eight or ten, when all the outlying farming districts are heard from it will be a low estimate that places the list of dead between 400 and 500.
Grindstone Lake, ten miles north of Hinckley, has been the camping ground for several Summers of parities from Hinckley. This year a larger number of persons were camped there than usual, and consequently, when a fire was seen to be encroaching on Neal’s place, three-quarters of a mile from one of the camps, several of the men started for the scene. John Patrick and two men named Elisworth and Collins were among the number. Other men were fighting the fire when they got there, and it was supposed that they could get it under control.
The party hardly reached the place, however, when they discovered flames shooting out over the tops of timber back of their own camp. Patrick started back along the shore, while the others got into a small skiff and paddled as fast as they could, hoping to reach the camp before it was overwhelmed. While they were still some distance away, they saw the women rushing into the lake and the camp outfit going up in flame and smoke.
Patrick had not gone far before a mass of fire drafted across the lake, over a mile wide, where he stood, and he fell before it as it sped on through the forest. His clothing was ignited, and for a time he was completely dazed. When he recovered his senses the fire was all about him, and only a narrow pathway through the water at the edge of the lake remained. The bank shelves off very deep along the lake, and offered an avenue of escape. As hew was splashing through the water a stray dog fell in behind him and went along in his company. The two had an encounter a little later with a black bear that, under ordinary circumstances, would have attacked them, but the beast sat in the water and only moved aside a few inches so that they could pass.
They finally reached a space where the road opened out from the lake, and here met twenty-one homesteaders and their families, who had been fleeing through the blinding smoke ahead of the flames. All the members of the party threw themselves into the lake and remained there until the flames had passed over. None was seriously injured, but all were so exhausted as to preclude the possibility of going further that night.
They lay on the banks of the lake until morning and then started back over the road they had come, in the direction of Sandstone Junction. Patrick has not seen or heard of them since. Eleven of the settlers, one a woman with an infant five weeks old, got into a canoe and paddled out into the lake.
BRAVE DEED PROMPTLY DONE.
Engineer Best Tells the Story of the Rescue at Hinckley.
WEST SUPERIOR, Wis., Sept. 4.—Nearly all those who survived the terrible forest fires in Northern Minnesota have now been removed to places of safety in Superior and Duluth, and, as a heavy rain has quenched the flames, there will be no further casualties. The work of searching for the dead is progressing in earnest.
Yesterday afternoon fifty-four bodies were buried at Sandstone, most of them charred beyond recognition. They were buried wherever found. When the relief train reached Sandstone, not a sign of a building was left in the town. Around or in the ruins of each house were found several human bodies. The living inhabitants of the town were brought into Superior at midnight. At Hinckley 328 bodies were lying in the streets. They are being buried as rapidly as possible by a committee from Pine City.
At Pokegama, on the St. Cloud Division of the Great Northern, there are twenty-eight corpses. They are still lying unburied, the rest of the people having left the place.
At Partridge only two are dead, although not a building is standing. It is impossible to tell where Partridge was, as the whole surrounding country is in ashes. Passenger traffic was resumed on the St. Paul and Duluth to-day, but Great Northern through trains will not be running for some time. William Best, engineer of the passenger train on the Easter Minnesota Road which saved many lives, said to-day: “Soon after leaving Superior, at 11:15 P. M. on Saturday, I had to light the headlight owing to the dense smoke, which turned day into night. The heat as we approached Hinckley increased, I expected that when we reached that point we would get in the open and escape the smoke.
“My surprise was great, therefore, when we found the fire right upon the town. It took but a glance to see that the town was doomed. The wind blew with great velocity, and the flames fairly leaped through the air.
“The people, taken by surprise, were helpless. Almost in an instant the town was swept by billows of flames. We could not pass Hinckley, and there was no use to look for orders, for communication was cut off. It was one of those cases where men have to make up their minds in an instant what is to be done and to do it without hesitation.
“Here were hundreds of panic-stricken people who were doomed if they were not instantly rescued. On the other hand, the safety of the train and its passengers lay in prompt retreat. To stay and rescue as many as we could was our duty, of course, but the great question, and upon it hung the lives of many hundreds, was how long dare we wait.
“Edward Barry was there with No. 28, in charge of the engine, and W. D. Campbell, the conductor, as plucky and brave fellows as ever passed a milepost. We knew we were safe in making time, for we could return on 28’s time, and as this train had the right of way, we knew that no other train would dare to stay on the main line without orders, if moving South.
“We hastily coupled a portion of Campbell’s freight train, with the engine ahead, on to the rear of our train. The flame-pursued people rushed toward our train and piled into the cars. Some of them were aged, and there were women and children who had to be helped aboard. We had to shift the position of the train several times to prevent it taking fire. We were almost breathing fire as it was. We saw people fall down, overcome by the heat and smoke. I saw mothers and their babies make a desperate effort to shelter their helpless charges.
“A few of our passengers became panic-stricken and wanted me to pull out, regardless of the suffers at Hinckley, but none of us thought of doing such a cowardly act. We got about 150 Hinckley people aboard—maybe more—and slipped off to take the others who had run up the track. We could not rescue all the people, for they could not get on the train. As many as came to us could be taken.
Click here to move to the September 6, 1894 New York Times coverage of the Hinckley Fire.
