The rescuers found many wounded people and one dead man in the wreckage of the street car. The dead man was Louis Krugman, a garment worker, of 308 East Eighth Street. Another of those in the car died soon after being removed from the wreckage. The worst injured were taken into the emergency hospital of the Suit Company, while others were treated in the streets by ambulance doctors and sent to their homes.
Two priests from St. Colomba’s Catholic Church, Fathers Rogers and Higgins, descended into the excavation and aided the rescuers. William Dennison, the subway engineer who was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital and was expected to die, was found with a girder across his chest, but was conscious, and Father Higgins anointed him before he was carried away. When a stimulant was offered to Dennison to alleviate his suffering, he refused, saying he did not drink.
The stifling odor of gas from broken mains hampered the rescuers. The Department of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity had employes at the cavity in eight minutes after the accident. They found that one twenty-four-inch high pressure fire main and several six-inch water mains had been broken, and that the water was rising in the excavation. Within half an hour they had all the high pressure mains closed, and thirty minutes later arrangements had been made through adjoining mains so that the high pressure system was ready for use. The smaller mains were shut off by the subway contractors, and temporary services were installed to meet the needs of the residents of the block.
Through the fortunate presence at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-third Street of a patrolman for the Consolidated Gas Company, the gas was shut off soon. Two mains had been broken; but on account of the experience in the construction of the Boston subway, when men were asphyxiated by escaping gas in a similar accident, the gas mains are laid along the curb in all the present construction in New York; so that while a considerable amount of gas escaped on the street it did no damage.
Fire Chief Kenlon directed much of the rescue work, and fifty additional firemen without apparatus were called out as soon as the nature of the emergency was known. Forty-four alarm boxes were put out of commission by the breaking of wires when the street went down, but service was restored with overhead wires an hour later.