ONE RESCUE STORY WAS VIVIDLY TOLD

Henderson Times, March 25, 1937

Paula Echols, who gave her name, and age as 15, to a newsgatherer Thurs. night after treatment in a Kilgore hospital, said she was sitting in her English class in the London high school building when the great explosion came. Her teacher was cushed, she said, under a falling section of the roof; a bou at the desk near her was screaming for help & all the teachers & pupils nearest to the building's front were buried under debris. Those furtherest from the front however were in better case, though about all more or less hurt. A boy pulled her from where she had been wedged between desks & got her through a window.

Other witnesses miles away near Kilgore, said they saw clouds of dust or smoke that rose as a result of the explosion; that the rumble that followed was like thunder. Others still claimed to have felt earth tremors as a quake.

That the fire was so quickly extinguished in the ruins is doubtless due to the fact that the high school building was as near fireproof as it could be made.

A student witness from another building said she saw her schoolmates blown to bits, mangled, hanging at the roof of the crumbling high school building & falling into the ruins. The first intimation of the disaster was a terrible roar; then she saw children blown through the roof.

Probably 1/3 of the pupils were not in the main building when the explosion occurred. Some had been taken out by a teacher for a urpose of instruction. Still others wee fortunately near windows & doors & the blast threw them out to safety in some instances.

Overton, Henderson & other nearby communities organized early for relief work.

Rangers, highway patrolmen & nearby units of the National Guard were ordered to London by Gov. Allred. Martial law soon reduced the confusion to order & the work of recovering the bodies of the dead & getting the injured to hospitals or homes went on with system, made easier too by the prompt sending of doctors, nurses, ambulance & medical supplies from about all the towns & cities in East Texas.

With the arrival of the soldiers, by order of the Gov. an investigation of the cause of the explosion was gotten under way. Other investigations forecast were by the Legislature, State fire marshall & the railroad commission.

Inasmuch as many of the bodies taken from the ruins were unrecognizable, it was thought at Austin that fingerprints given by school children at Centennial last fall might lead to the identification of some of the dead. The safety dept. sent men to take fingerprints of such children as otherwise might not be identifiable.

NOTES

Rev. R. L. Jackson, Methodist minister at London, lives 2 blocks from the high school site. He said that the explosion threw members of his family to the floor.

L. V. Barber, a senior, was in study hall & gave his experience as one of the survivors. He remembers hearing no explosion but the first intimation he got of the trouble was feeling the particles of falling plaster or morter on his neck. Then he saw the building was caving-in & heard the rumble of the falling roofs & walls. He thought that most of the students in the study hall escaped through the windows.

Miss Olgo Larsen, Red Cross nurse from Tyler, found about 1,000 rescue workers digging in the ruins for bodies she said. She was joined by some 25 other nurses of her order.

Miss Christine Beasley, teacher, was in the school cafeteria when she became conscious of the calamity. She at once ran towards the crumbling high school building in a shower of bricks, mortar & various falling dangers. She stumbled over bodies of children that had been stricken down on the campus by flying wreckage or hurled from the building by the blast.

Evelyn Peters was among those who were flung by the explosion through a window, her foot striking a nail in a board or beam, causing a painful wound, but considered herself very fortunate indeed to have escaped worse fortune.

J. B. Nelson, Jr., oil company employee, was also among those retiring from the building through a window. He saw 20 children in a room, he said, buried under falling books from the bookshelves & some badly injured.

Houston sent nurses, physicians & skilled rescue workers. The Humble Oil & Refining Co. got 15 nurses & 4 physicians to London by special bus at 7 o'clock on the evening of the explosion. The contingent wa in charge of Dr. T. L. Fontaine.

Dallas sent even a larger body of workers in all lines of rescue work.

Besides the Red Cross, of which the President is the head, the War Dept. & the Bureau of Mines at Washington headquarters set relief agencies at once in motion Thurs. evening, and each started an investigation to ascertain the cause of the disaster.

Wichita Falls sent an airplane load of nurses & doctors.

Principal T. R. Duran, whom the newsmen sought to get information as to London's fine school, now destroyed in part, said that the pride of the school is the manual training dept. which includes a workshop equipment costing $7000 with a mechanical drawing room. A 65 piece band is one of the musical features; there is some $3500 invested in band instruments; 2 laboratories have $2000 worth of equipment; the athletic field is lighted, graded & sodded. Steel bleachers has a seating capacity of 1260. Reliable estimates places the value of the school properties, including oil well royalties from the school district owned lands, at $1,000,000.

Dallas sent 30 doctors, 100 nurses, 25 embalmers & many ambulances.

A man who sells school supplies had an appointment with one of the school teachers on the afternoon of the disaster. He arrived (having been delayed,) two minutes after the explosion.

One story was that a boy and a girl were found together in the ruins Friday morning, having been there since 3:20 o'clock the afternoon previous, under the ruins, but sheltered by an encrusted mass of fallen roof. They were alive but hysterical as they were bourn out of the wreckage.

Midafternoon Friday, the work of clearing away the wreckage ceased at the scene of the disaster. The last body had been taken from the ruins Friday morning-it being the 425 th. The oilfield laborers who had done most of the work earned much praise from parents, observers & newsmen. They toiled long & faithfully in the ruins from mid afternoon Thurs. until the same hour Fri. afternoon.

Jesse Couch, 30, Wills Point man, was killed in a car wreck Thurs. night when he & 4 others were on their way to London to view the scene of the disaster. The accident occurred near Tyler. All were hurt.

Messages of sympathy came from as far away as the Kanto Commercial School, Tokio, Japan; and Maracaibo, Venezuela, parents asked assurance of the safety of 2 grandchildren enrolled in the London school.

Margie Thiebaud, 14, was buried in the Easter dress she had selected before she died in last Thursday's school building disaster.

Jules & Carl Williams, both slightly injured in the explosion, each carried 2 of their fellow students to safety from the crumbling building.

Mrs. Odell Gary, in study hall with 95 pupils at the time of the collapse of the high school building told her pupils to get under their desks for safety. Seen at her Overton home Friday she said that none in the study hall was seriously hurt. "I got under my own desk" she said.

Forest Ave. High School, Dallas, raised $145 in nickles, dimes & quarters - the students contributing from their lunch money - for the relief of suffering as a result of last Thursday's blast at London.

4 explosion experts of the US Bureau of Mines, flew to London from Washington Fri. of last week to do a part in ascertaining the cause of the disaster.

In the House of Representatives of the National Congress last Friday, Rev. James Shera Montgomery, the chaplain, prayed for the comfort of the London school disaster sufferers.

H. G. White, Jr., 10 year old, said, "I was sitting studying my assignment; we all were in Mrs. Lena Hunt's room & the second floor fell on us. Kids from above were stepping all over me." H. G. got out all right with the exception of a few scratches. He was up to his neck in debris, he said, but he got out without any help.

A legislative committee was appointed by House & Senate at Austin last Fri. to meet at Henderson Mon. & begin an investigation of the cause of the explosion in the London high school.

On a blackboard which rescue workers pulled out of the debris of the London high school building was the schoolboy scrawl: "Oil & natural gas are East Texas greatest blessing."

The Pleasant Hill Cemetery, between Henderson & New London, was enlarged last week to make room for the London school blast victims. More than an acre was added.

Principal Troy Duran excused student Herbert McCurk, 19, from attending class at London last Thurs. afternoon. He was only a quarter of a mile away when the explosion occurred & his classmate who sat on one side of him was killed; the classmate on the other adjoining desk was badly injured. The teacher was killed by a falling slab.