Explosion of an oil well — loss of Life and frightful Scenes.
It has already been briefly mentioned that an oil well in Warren county, Pa., took fire a few days ago and exploded with frightful effect, causing the loss of eighteen lives. A letter gives the following additional particulars:‘ A well which had been drilled over two hundred feet by Hawley & Merrick, had struck oil, but the yield being less than expected, the pumping was abandoned and drilling re-commenced. Over one hundred feet further were drilled, when at half-past 5 on Wednesday evening a sudden rush of oil through the five inch and a half tubing threw out the drills and gushed up into the air forty feet above the surface of the ground. At the least computation it was throwing from seventy to one hundred barrels an hour. Above this mass of oil, the gas of benzine rose in a cloud, for fifty or sixty feet. As soon as the oil commenced gushing forth, all the fires of engines in the neighborhood were immediately extinguished.
At about half-past 11, as a large number of men and boys were around the well engaged in saving the oil, the gas from the well, which had spread in every direction, took fire from the engine of a well over four hundred rods distant, when in a second the whole air was in a flame, with a crash and a roar like discharges from a park of artillery. As soon as the gas took fire, the head of the jet of oil was in a furious blaze, and falling like water from a fountain over space one hundred feet in diameter each drop came down a blazing globe of boiling oil. Instantly the ground was aflame, constantly increased and augmented by the falling oil. At once a scene of indescribable horror took place. Scores were thrown flat and for a distance of twenty feet, and numbers horribly burned rushed blazing from the hell of misfortune, shrieking and screaming in their anguish.
Just within the circle of the flame could be seen four bodies boiling in the seething oil, and one man, who had been digging a ditch to convey away the oil to a lower part of the ground, was killed as he dug, and could be seen as he fell over the handle of his spade, roasting in the fierce element. Mr. H. R. Rouse, of the firm of Rouse, Mitchell & Brown, of the village of Enterprise, Warren county, a gentleman largely interested in wells in this locality, and whose income from them amounted to $1,000 a day, was standing near the pit, and was blown 20 feet by the explosion. He got up and ran about 10 or 15 feet further, and was dragged out by two men, and conveyed to a shanty some distance from the well. When he arrived, not a vestige of clothing was left upon him except his stockings and boots. His hair was burned off, as well as his finger nails, his ears and his eyelids, while the balls of his eyes were crisped up to nothingness. In this condition he lived nine hours--made his will, leaving $100,000 to the poor of Warren county, the same amount to repair the roads of Warren county, and $500 a year to his father, his only living relation, for life. He died, however, without signing the will.
The bodies of five other men were recovered and recognized. In addition there are the skeletons of five others visible within the circle of flame, and as many are missing — strangers, who came to witness the operations of the wells. It is supposed that a number of others have been burned to a powder, close by the mouth of the well. Some thirty-four were wounded.
At the time of the explosion, everything in the neighborhood--sixty or seventy rods — took fire, and shanties, derricks, engine-houses and dwellings, were at once involved in flames.--The boiler of Dobbs' well, eighty rods from the original fire, blew up with a tremendous explosion, killing instantly the engineer, Wesley Skinner, adding another intensity to the evening's horrors. At this time the whole air was on fire. The jet of oil rushing up forty feet was almost a pillar of livid flame, while the gas above it, to the distance of a hundred feet, was flashing, exploding, dashing toward the heavens, and apparently licking the clouds with its furious tongues of heat.
All this time, during this tremendous combustion, the sounds of the explosions and burnings were so tremendous and continuous that they could be compared to nothing but the rushing of a hurricane or tornado through a forest. The heat of the fire was so intense that no one could approach within 150 feet without scorching their skin or garments. It was the most frightful and yet the grandest pyrotechnical display ever vouchsafed to a human being.
On Friday morning the oil was still rushing up, on fire, with the same regularity and speed, throwing, it was calculated, at least 100 barrels an hour, covering an immense space with flaming oil — a loss to the proprietors of the well of from $20,000 to $25,000 daily. No human power can extinguish the flames, and the oil must burn on until the well is exhausted. No pen can describe its fierceness, no tongue describe the magnitude of its horrors. Thousands of spectators visit the scene every day. It seems the earth is really on fire, and its elements about to melt with fervent heat. The flames were, at last accounts, still ascending to the height of eighty feet.
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