Cleveland Clinic

One morning last week at New Rochelle, N.Y., the students of the college of that name were entering chapel for seven o'clock mass when flames (caused by a short circuit) burst from the ceiling; the students fled unhurt.

The same morning at Strasbourg, France, the gasoline tank of a motor bus exploded in a car barn, covered ten workmen with flaming gasoline; three soon died; others were expected to.

The same morning at Cornish, N. H., there was a kerosene explosion in a one-room cabin: two young mothers, three infants and the cabin were incinerated; an adolescent youth escaped, gravely burned.

That fatal morning was not yet over. At 11:35 in the basement of the Cleveland Clinic, at 93rd Street and Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, a stock of X-ray films exploded. At that hour there were 234 people in the building. Within 15 minutes about 100 of them were dead, with many more dying.

The first explosion was followed by a second, greater one. Glass was blown from the windows. The force of the explosion blew out a skylight and the descending fragments fell through a shaft upon the people seated in the waiting room three floors below. Plaster showered from walls and ceilings. A heavy yellow gas poured through the building. Doctors, nurses and patients sniffed it and fled. Some seated in chairs took a long breath and died without moving. Some reached the windows, prepared to jump, but billows of gas enveloped them and they fell back dead. Others succeeded in leaping from the first and second story windows. Some limped away. Some lay writhing in agony and died upon the lawn, for the gas followed them even into the open. Passersby upon the street collapsed.

Meanwhile nurses and others, many partly clothed, fled from the two main exits of the building, screaming and clutching their throats. Firemen and policemen rushed to the scene. For 15 minutes they could not penetrate the fumes without gas masks.

Fire ladders were extended to the roof. The firemen looked down through the broken skylight on a stairway filled with a mass of struggling bodies, arms and legs twisted and intertangled. Screams and shrieks of agony arose. The rescuers broke their way in from the roof. More than 16 bodies blocked the stairway. Only one, that of a doctor, seemed alive. He was removed first but died in a hospital.

Pulmotors were carried into the building from the roof and applied to the victims as headway was made into the smoke-filled rooms. A few of those revived were able to walk to ladders and descend. The great majority were carried out. The lawns adjoining were littered with the bodies of the dead and dying, all yellow from the gas. Rescue squads worked over them with pulmotors. Only those who received immediate oxygen treatment survived. One man who had escaped said, "The gas didn't bother me. Help the others who are dying." Five minutes later he collapsed and died on the way to a hospital. An X-ray salesman who had been in the building, although warned to go to a hospital, insisted on helping the rescuers. He soon gave up, presented himself, laughing, at a hospital for treatment, was dead within ten minutes.

At the hospitals, janitors and washerwomen were pressed into service to help administer oxygen. One young interne started to give oxygen to a woman and discovered she was his wife. She died while he worked over her. Through the next day, persons who had escaped and many rescuers who had gone home, thinking themselves safe suddenly collapsed. They were taken to hospitals. Many of them died. Ben Jones, professional football player, only slightly gassed in the Clinic, drove home, 150 miles to Grove City, Pa., became ill 24 hours later and died.

At the morgue bodies strewed the floor because all the slabs were occupied. A sign painter lettered the names of the victims on a large billboard as they were identified. There were 125 all told, including 17 from the staff of the Clinic. It was the worst catastrophe in Cleveland since 172 schoolchildren were burned to death in 1908.

The shock of the disaster extended not only throughout the U. S. but to Europe. The Lord Mayor of London telephoned to Mayor John Daniel Marshall of Cleveland to express sympathy. The editors of the London Sketch and Daily News telephoned to Managing Editor Thomas Aaron Robertson of the Cleveland News to get the details of the tragedy for their papers.

What the deadly fumes were composed of was only guessed. Apparently it was a mixture. The coroner had the blood of several victims examined and found bromine and hydrocyanic acid (both deadly). Others hazarded that there were quantities of carbon monoxide in the gas. The fact that many, not apparently suffering at first, later succumbed, led to the supposition that nitrogen dioxide (brown gas like bromine) was one of the poisons.

At first the origin of the explosions was believed to have been the X-ray room where twelve bodies were found. Later it was placed in the film storage room in the basement. On the morning of the disaster one Buffery Bogg, steamfitter, had been called to repair a leaking steam pipe. He found the leak in the film room and removed a section of the covering, but the pipe was too hot to work on. So he went out and asked to have the steam turned off. When he returned the room was filled with steam. Something on the ceiling was on fire. He turned a fire extinguisher on it, was overcome by smoke, then literally blown out of the basement by an explosion.

There was a steel fire door on the film room fitted with a thermostat to close it if the temperature became too high. But sometime before, a blundering plumber had placed a water pipe in such a way that although it did not prevent the closing of the door by hand, it interfered with the aim of the automatic closing device. The door failed to close when the film began to burn and the gases (both poisonous and explosive) issuing forth, were driven through the building by a ventilating fan a few feet away.

In recent years a nonexplosive cellulose nitrate type acetate X-ray film has been developed, but the films in the clinic were evidently of the more common and highly inflammable cellulose nitrate type. Under writers recommend that films be stored in metal vaults on the roof rather than in the basement of buildings.

The Cleveland Clinic was founded in 1921 by four physicians who pledged them selves to give one-fourth of their incomes to its support. Most noted of the founders is Dr. George W. Crile, inventor of "nerve-block" anesthesia and improvements in blood transfusion technique, an expert in thyroid gland and respiratory system operations. At the time of the explosion he was performing an operation in the Clinic hospital in a nearby building. He was not told of the accident until the operation was completed. Still in his white gown and operating cap he rushed to the scene.

"They're all gassed. It's film gas," he cried on seeing the victims. "Clear the way. Give them more air. Have we oxygen enough? Firemen, more firemen!" Dr. John Phillips, another of the founders of the Clinic left the wrecked building after working long among the victims. He started to walk home, collapsed.

Dr. Crile gave his colleague a blood transfusion, but Dr. Phillips died. Seven other physicians died, including five of the clinic staff: Drs. Harry Andison, John Borello, Roy A. Brintnall, Edgar S. Hunter, Charles E. Locke.