hours it should be possible to destroy more or less completely seventeen buildings and only slightly injure two persons.
It may be contended that the number of buildings damaged was very high, but it must be remembered that rockets without sticks take a most erratic course in their flight, rendering the effective screening of other buildings most difficult, if not impossible.
However, there is evidence that many rockets were stopped by the screens, and that without their interposition the number of buildings destroyed might have been many times greater.
The other Explosives Act requirements of which the efficiency was demonstrated by this accident, are the dividing of sheds into compartments with a limited number of workpeople in each, easy means of escape from working buildings, and the value of uninflammable clothing.
It was also shown that a large quantity of fireworks might be burnt in mass without causing a veritable explosion; as in the case of the magazine containing 3,000 lbs.
Contrasting with this occurrence are the reports of accidents in firework factories both on the Continent and in America.
The same year, at Civita Vecchia, ten persons were killed and twice that number injured in one accident at a firework factory.
Four years later, in Paris, seven girls were killed out of the eighteen employed in one compartment. The material being used was red phosphorus and chlorate. In 1882 fourteen persons were killed and no fewer than seventy injured at Chester, Pennsylvania.
From 1891 to 1894 eight accidents in the United States are reported, resulting in a total of twenty-three deaths and injury to more than fifty persons. In 1894, at New Haven, Con., damage to the extent of 125,000 dollars was done, and at Dallas a considerable part of the city was destroyed.
