Dynamite Stories, and Some Interesting Facts About Explosives

by Hudson Maxim

In the edge of the evening, after her arrival, she and I were sitting at the dining-room table engaged in conversation. I was telling her how groundless had been her fears, when there came a terrific explosion. The sky was lighted up with a brilliancy that would shame the noon-day sun, and fragments of brands from the burning fell all about the house.

I confess that I was as much surprised as she was—and that was going some. I rushed out, and found that my tool-house, located about a hundred yards from my residence, had blown up, and the wreckage was on fire. Being sure that there were no explosives in the building, I was greatly puzzled.

There were in the place at the time perhaps a hundred rounds of Mauser rifle cartridges. These were exploding, one after another, from the heat. The neighbors who had run to witness the fire, were greatly frightened, and did not dare to render any assistance in putting out the flames, especially while the cartridges were exploding.

I ran to a hydrant nearby, got out the fire-hose, and found, to my amazement, what one usually finds under such circumstances, that the nozzle of the hose had been taken off, and the hose disconnected from the hydrant, and that there was no wrench there. I ran and got another hose and a wrench, made the connections, and ran out the hose to extinguish the fire, when I found that only a small stream of water as big as my thumb flowed from the hose. I then ran down to my house to see if there were any faucets open which would reduce the pressure, and then to the pump-house to measure the water in the supply tank, and found that the tank was nearly full, and that thirty-five thousand gallons of water were available for extinguishing the fire. Yet I could get no pressure. The result was that nothing was saved, and the building and all its contents were a complete loss. As there was no insurance, the loss was about fifteen hundred dollars.

After it was too late to save the building, I walked down to the Hotel Durban, on my property, which I supplied with water, to calm the fears of some of the guests who were agitated, when, to my amazement, I found a two-inch fire-hose turned on full, and running in the road. I learned then that a stupid fellow who was staying at the hotel, had turned the water on at several fire hydrants to play water on the hotel, although the hotel was at such a safe distance from the tool-house that there was not a particle of danger whatsoever. It never occurred to him to close off one hydrant when he opened another; consequently, the pressure was reduced so that no water at all could be had at the scene of the fire, and not pressure enough on the hose-pipes that he had turned on to do any good even had they been needed.

After things had quieted down, I returned to the house to resume my conversation, and to repeat my assurances to the young lady secretary, but I found a polite note tacked to the table-cloth, requesting that her trunk be forwarded the next day. She had not waited for further conviction as to the safety of her new position.

On investigation, I learned that a fire had started in the tool-house from some cause unknown, and had proceeded long enough to get one side of the interior of the building well ablaze. As there were five gallons of denatured alcohol in the place, and the same quantity of gasoline, and about ten pounds of sulphuric ether, it is probable that one of these had become heated and, bursting, set free a lot of vapor which, mixing with the atmosphere, exploded. There were also in the building about thirty pounds of finely pulverized aluminum, ten pounds of magnesium powder and other ingredients for flashlight powders, with which I intended to conduct experiments. As these materials were not mixed, they were not explosive, but their combustion was what produced the wonderful light when the explosion occurred. The result was not like that from an explosion of dynamite, in which case the building would have been literally blown to fragments, but, as is usual in gas explosions, the roof of the building was lifted up, the sides thrown out, and the roof dropped in. Even the front door of the building, charred from the initial fire, was found otherwise intact.

While sitting on the porch of my house on Lake Hopatcong, dictating this story to my stenographer, and when I had arrived at this point, she suddenly called to me, “Look!” pointing her finger across the Lake to a huge column of smoke going up from the Atlas Powder Works, and mushrooming out into the sky. The direct distance is about three miles, but it seemed quite a long time before we felt the shock and heard the sound. Although the sound was loud and the shock considerable, the sound was much louder and the shock much heavier even at longer distances in several directions, owing, I imagine, to the difference in the underlying strata of earth.