The "Black Hole" of Paris page 2

For it was not realised by any one until a comparatively long time had elapsed that the passengers were by no means all accounted for. Around the Couronnes station stood a crowd of awe-stricken spectators watching dense clouds of smoke pour sluggishly forth from its mouth. They witnessed the arrival of the Fire Brigade, heard the firemen's report soon afterwards that down below the heat was too intense and the smoke too thick for them to be able to advance far enough to examine the line. This seemed of relatively small importance, however, since it was generally understood that there had been no casualties at all, or at all events that they had been confined to a few fainting women.

About 2 a.m. - some six hours after the accident, that is to say - a fireman wearing a respirator made an effort to enter Menilmontant station, but even protected thus was obliged to return. One of his comrades who renewed the attempt a little later reported that all he could make out in the tunnel was the glow of the red-hot rails, crossed by smouldering sleepers. At an early hour of the morning, however, a third descent was made, and this time the searchers found that which turned them sick with horror. In Menilmontant station, huddled together near the ticket-office, were seven corpses. But it was at the Couronnes station that the largest number of victims was discovered. Here they piled in a great mound against a blank wall at the end of the platform - people of both sexes and all ages, mostly of the labouring class, and all dead by suffocation. "They presented a horrible spectacle which recalled to the Parisians the terrible sights of the Charity Bazaar in May, 1897," said the station-master of Les Couronnes. In all, 84 poor victims were brought to the surface and hurried away to the Morgue, while the throng outside gazed in horrified stupefaction....

At the Morgue the bodies were laid out for identification in three outer rooms, in hastily constructed coffins of plain boards, while those for whom room could not be found were placed in a guardroom at the barracks. "These corpses," wrote one who went to inspect that dreadful array, "have a horribly unreal look, and were it not for the intolerable and choking smell of burnt flesh and smoke which rises from them, it would be hard to believe that they were anything but grimly realistic figures in the waxworks of a fair. The clothes, though torn and tumbled, are not burned at all. The faces and hands are of a purple-bronze colour. Blood has dried round the ears and mouths and nostrils, and each face has an open mouth and a swollen look. Many of the hands are torn, and some of the cheeks and foreheads gape with open wounds."

Reading this almost unbearably faithful piece of description, it is not difficult to picture a subterranean fight for life so fearful as to make the struggles related by Madame Justinel, Mons. Martin, and the others who won back to the land of the living appear trivial by comparison. And equally eloquent was the condition of the tunnel and the stations, when the dead had been removed and the atmosphere had cleared sufficiently to make a thorough examination possible.

"I ventured with a smoke-begrimed fireman carrying a blazing torch," says one of the investigators, "down the station staircase to the death-trap, half-suffocated by the smell of burning wood, tar and india-rubber. The heat was still intense. The station was in absolute darkness, but by the fitful glimmer of the fireman's torch I could see the fatal train, covered with a thick coating of soot, still standing where it had stopped with its doomed freight.

"In the water and blood which flooded the platform, handkerchiefs, belts, hats, veils, a child's hoop, and other articles were lying where they had been abandoned by their owners in the mad rush for life. The windows were smashed to atoms. At one end of the platform was an enamelled wall, the lower part of which, unlike the rest, was free from smoke and dirt. I asked the fireman for an explanation. 'That,' he said, 'is where the people, flying from the smoke, sought for an exit and found themselves up against a dead wall. When we came to clear away the bodies we found seventy-five corpses there."

Here, too, is the impression which that silent tableau of horror produced upon another observer, the representative of Le Francais: "We proceeded by the light of torches, which cast fantastic shadows upon the calcined walls. It is impossible to imagine a more tragic sight. In this flooded subterranean passage, upon the glistening and slippery pavement, there is an indescribable chaos of hats, umbrellas and articles of dress - here a doll bathed in a pool of blood, there a loaf of bread half-covered by a newspaper. On the line the lugubrious forms of the carriages are outlined against the semi-obscurity.... The cushions and backs of the seats are torn to pieces. One can imagine the fearful struggle of the unfortunate creatures against the implacable death to which they were bound to succumb. Just at the end of the side opposite the staircase is a formless mass, monstrous and terrible, consisting of debris of all sorts. It is against this wall that the unhappy victims must have crushed each other to death in their panic-stricken efforts to escape. It is stained with blood. The tiles have been torn from the wall, and the cement shows traces of having been scratched by their nails. What terrible moments must have been passed by those unhappy victims in searching for an exit which did not exist! It aeries all conception."

It would be difficult indeed to say where lay the most heart-rending evidence of tragedy, when tragedy was everywhere - whether in the gloom of the tunnel or at the Morgue; in the Police Station in the Rue des Trois Bornes, where pitiful rows of umbrellas, sunshades, hats and other relics waited to be reclaimed, or outside Belleville station, where strong detachments of police and municipal troops held back a dense crowd of working men and women, all frantic for tidings of missing loved ones. In one instance a man pushed his way back through the throng, wringing his hands in despair and exclaiming over and over again, "There's nothing left but to go and look for them at the Morgue!" and he was but one of hundreds.

Innumerable tales of utmost pathos emerge from this calamity. The family which suffered most was one called Didon, which had five victims to mourn - Mons. Didon, who was a commercial traveller, his wife, two daughters, and the wife's sister, Madame Aubertin. Upon this last poor woman was found a return ticket for Edinburgh, where she occupied a post as a teacher of languages. Madame Lecas, of 173 Rue de Bagnolet, a woman employed in a furniture warehouse, left three children motherless, of ages ranging from six to sixteen. Then there was a bronze-worker of the name of Ternois, married only three months previously; he failed to come home that night, and his young wife found him in the Morgue. Equally pathetic was the case of a family called Barratte. The father, a gasman, had three daughters, who lived together in Brittany. The eldest, who had been married just a week before the tragedy, had come to Paris with her sisters to see the old folks. On Monday the three girls, accompanied by the bridegroom, had gone out shopping, and the two younger ones had then taken the fatal train to return home. They now lay side by side in death in a little room of the Rue d'Avron....

The funeral of the victims took place on the isth, and was attended by the Prime Minister, the President of the Municipal Council, the Ministers of War and Commerce, the Prefect of Police, the Military Governor, and a special representative of the President. The sympathetic presence of these high officials, however, was not enough; the populace was burning with resentment, feeling that 84 lives had been needlessly sacrificed as a burnt offering to apathy in high places. The reality of the public sentiment may be gauged by the facts that on the day following the catastrophe the receipts of the "Metro" were practically nil and its shares dropped from Fr. 644 to Fr. 593.

In response to the outcry for immediate and effective remedying of the lamentable state of affairs which had made such an accident possible, a Committee of Inquiry was at once set up, and its recommendations were actually published within 48 hours. The chief suggestions made were that access to stations be provided at both ends of the platforms; that a footpath be provided on either side of the rails; that ventilators be constructed in the tunnels at given intervals; that the rolling stock be made of hard wood, if possible uninflammable; that the railings at station-entrances be abolished; that the number of passengers taken into the trains be limited to the number of seats; that motor-carriages be abandoned in favour of separate locomotives; and that the live rail be placed along the roof of the tunnel instead of on the ground.

It will be clear, then, that good came out of evil inasmuch as the authorities were forced, by this tragic occurrence, to take measures which should have been taken at the very outset. The Company attempted to lay the whole blame on the engine-driver, but this the public would not for a moment tolerate. Indeed, the popular attitude received the seal of official approbation when Mons. Combes, the Prime Minister, said in his funeral oration, "It is deeply to be regretted that elementary precautions were not taken from the beginning."