Nobody Injured

Nobody Injured 

The Direct Cause of the Explosion is Unknown - Damage $1,000.

To anybody in Ann Arbor who was desirous of being awakened at 6 o'clock Monday, an alarm clock was entirely superfluous. A terrific explosion occurred at that hour in the purifying room of the Ann Arbor Gas Co.'s plant at the corner of Detroit and Depot sts. Within a radius of 10 or 12 blocks people were either thrown out of bed or were roughly roused from their slumbers or were awakened according to the distance from the cause of the explosion. Outside of this circle the remainder of the inhabitants were called up by the alarm of the fire.

The explosion, as he been said, took place in the purifying room of the gas house. There was nobody inside of the building at the time except the night watchman, George Zeifle. Luckily he happened to be in the engine room and the force of the explosion did not come in his direction. Her escaped without any injury except the jar on his nerves which was enough to take away the appetite of a hungry school boy. The force of the explosion was directed toward the east. The roof of the wing which forms the purifying room was blown off and the walls of the wing were made a wreckage. That some idea may be had of the concussion, there resulted the breakage of four windows in the store occupied by Mrs. Glasier, and three plate glass windows in the saloon of G.A. Waidlich, besides the destruction of the windows of the second story of the latter building. These are situated a distance of 125 feet from the place of the explosion. Besides, some pieces of brick and mortar were found 400 feet to the east, while the telephone wires were heavily laden with pieces of boards and tin from the roofing. The early hour of the occurrence was what accounts for nobody outside of the building being hurt as there were no passers-by at the time.

As soon as the explosion occurred a large pule of waste took fire and blazed high but the flames were extinguished by the fire department. 

Ferdinand Hochrien, the foreman of the plant, was soon on the scene and shut off the supply of gas from the gas house and also to the pipes leading to the tank. The purifyers were examined and found to be intact and in working order, and strange as it may seem none of the parts of the machinery about the building or the pipes were injured so that the manfacture and supply of gas was immediately continued the same as if nothing had happened.

Mrs. Dell Keeler, who lives just south of the big tank, says that she and her husband were eating breakfast bout 6 o'clock this morning and in an instant - the shortest imaginable - before the explosion took place they felt a sensation as if the whole ground under their home was rocking.

A man in the Hammond Standish Co.s' office to the northwest was bending over pulling on his shoes. He was knocked over on the floor.

Nobody employed by the Gas Co. offers any explanation as to the explosion. There must have been either leakage or over-supply of the gas. Mr. Hochrein says that there was no leakage. That he has examined all the pipes and find none. The most plausible theory then is that, last evening being Sunday, but comparatively little gas was used by consumers, and an over-supply was crowded into the purifyers; that the over-supply had to get vent somewhere, and it filled the room in which a gas jet must have been burning. The combination worked the disaster, undoubtedly. There have been rumors that one of the men walked into the purifying room with a lantern, but this is denied, and it is probably so, for had it been the case, the would never have walked out.

The only damage suffered is the destruction of the walls and roof of the old wing and the broken windows across the street, besides some damage to the interior of the gas building. Moses Seabolt estimates the entire damage to be $1,000.