Press enter after choosing selection

Strange Happening

Strange Happening image
Parent Issue
Day
5
Month
June
Year
1903
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Strange Happening

How a Falling Three Ton Safe Caused the Death of Two Mean.

Huge Mass of Steel Dropped Three Stories -- Men Hurled From Skids as From a Catapult.

Every man who lives in a city has watched a great mass of steel hoisted up above the sidewalk by slender, straining ropes and has thought for an instant of the possibility of its falling. Then probably he has stepped past the danger sign and walked cheerfully under the impending danger.

A disaster occurred while a steel safe weighing 6,500 pounds was being hoisted to the third floor of the Mercantile National bank building, New York. The method of putting the safe in position was as follows: A crossbeam was fixed in the roof calculated to bear the weight of the safe. Ropes were tied around the safe and then passed over the beam on the roof. The safe was then hauled up by means of the windlass on the wagon and a pulley suspended from the crossbeam. The safe was hauled up until it was above the third floor, where it was to be placed. The sashes had been removed from the window on the third floor, and upon the sill were laid two heavy beams or skids.

An assistant foreman sat on the safe while it was being hauled up and down to fend it off from the walls and to give directions to those below. When the safe was near enough to the window he stepped off on to one of the skids and into the room.

The two skids were of unequal length. On the longer one inside the room James Magnussen was standing, while on the shorter one Assistant Foreman James Meehan had just taken his place.

The safe was nearly in position above the skids, and the two men were ready to haul it in toward the window sill.

Meehan called out to the man below: "Lower away another foot."

At that very moment the safe fell with a noise like a cannon shot. The fall was due to the breaking of the pin on which the trolley sheaves turn. The safe struck the outer ends of the two skids. The shorter one, upon which Meehan stood, flew up and out of the window. The man, utterly powerless, went with it and shot out of the window.

Meehan was really the missile in a great catapult, the sort of weapon the ancients use to batter down city walls before cannons were invented. As he went he made a curious faint screaming noise, the motion being too swift to allow him to use his voice strongly.

He reached the sidewalk a mass of broken bones and was of course fatally injured. He died an hour after he was taken to the Hudson Street hospital.

Magnussen, who was standing on the longer skid, also flew up into the air, but he was at the end of a longer radius, and there was not room tor him to pass out of the window. He was jammed up against the ceiling between it and the huge beam and fatally injured. The base of his skull was fractured and all his teeth knocked out.

Everything happened like a flash- in far less time than it takes to describe it. Both men, accustomed as they were to this perilous work, were quite unable to slip off the planks as they were hurled upward. It would not have taken more than a second to do so, but little as that is the skids, acting swiftly under the laws of mechanics, were far too swift for them.

The safe shot straight through the six inch flagstones of the sidewalk into the basement below. Meehan's body stretched across the opening in the sidewalk made by it.