November 29, 1902 – Explosions shatter the Swift and Company’s
refrigerating plant at Forty-First Street as a boiler explodes, killing 13 and
injuring 26. The huge refrigeration building’s boiler room contained 11 boilers,
and one of the five boilers on the north side of the room apparently boiled dry
and exploded, lifting the majority of the boilers off their bases. The explosion occurs at 10:00 a.m. According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, “One boiler was lifted thirty feet in air
and carried over the two story storage room just west of the boiler room. As it dropped to the earth it carried away
the west wall of the building, leaving an opening through which fifty
frightened employees of the storage room rushed to safety . . . Another boiler
was blown fifty feet to the north, where it collided with a freight car. A third ended its flight thirty-five feet
eastward, after it had penetrated a brick wall and brought death to two workmen
who were excavating for a sewer along the boiler room wall.”
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