Building Explosion In The Gilded Age

1235 Words5 Pages

In movies and media, building explosion being portrayed as an incredible sight to see however, what most people do not remember that it is a horrific experience that forever imprint onto the viewers. In 1886, a cigar box manufacture unexpectedly caught in an explosion that injured many young man, woman, and children. During 1880s factories are made up of large brick house that consisted of multiple stories high with big windows as the source of light. While workers and business owners knew that the working conditions are not safe, there were not many policy in America to help the workers during this time period.

The Gilded Age era begins from 1870s and lasted to 1890s in the United States. The reason why it was named the “Gilded Age” were …show more content…

An engineer went to work and started the steam up in the boiler room by throwing a great amount of sawdust on to the fire from the sawdust bin, which is near the fire. Once the engineer finished starting the steam up, he went outside in front of the building. As he stood there for a couple of minutes he heard an explosion, and when he turned around he saw the top portion of the back wall slowly breaking apart accompanied by girls screaming. Bricks flew in all directions, and according to the engineer not even a minute later the whole building go up in …show more content…

People concluded that she died by being buried under the steam pipes and heavy timbers when the explosion happened. Fifteen people were in serious condition, but not fatal. Some girls have bruises from jumping off the building, but most of the girls were able to go home the same day after their trip to the hospital. Although there are no known fact of what really caused the explosion, a theory state that after the engineer started up the fire by throwing in the sawdust. The wind draft blew the flames out, and carried the sawdust in the bin upward through a dust vents. The air-tight atmosphere in the dust vent caused a chained reaction, creating the