Loading...
The Seaforth News, 1934-03-15, Page 3THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1934. THE SEAFORTH NEWS PAGE THREE THE ONTARIO LEGISLATURE mining licenses and recording fees tatives of all provinces, w'hic'h delved` The burning well was a beautiful $3!900!0 ; gasoline tax .$-.'SSS 000'• motor' into- the -question of uniform- rules spectacle at night, The flame shot and regulations for commercial ve A surplus„ of :.$2115,000for the fiscal year ending October 311 nest was forecast by !Premier -George S. Hen- ry in presentation of the budget in the Ontario Legislature last week. In delivering the financi'a'l picture for 11934, the !Premier drove a warm at- tack on members of the Opposition for their lack of faith .at a time when Ontario is emerging .from depressive conditions to renewed prosperity. "On all side's we find faith and op -titnisn," declared the !Premier, "This' 'feeling "'of confidence exists because a !Conservative administration is in ,control. And despite blue -ruin talk from opposition critics the province is sound and stable," To Progressive :Leader Nixon, Pre- mier Henry delivered a stinging re tort for the former to go and tell 'Provincial Liberal Leader I-Tep'burn the truth about the province, "Tell him to sing a song of op- ti•mislm and hope in the future of this .great province," declared the Prem- ier, "and- not to spend his time go- ing up and dowdy the country sowing seeds of distrust, dissension 'and dis- order. The people of the province are proud of the statements I have made on the budget. They will be prouder to speak sometime this summer as to what they think of the stewards -hip of the Conservative administration and of the record -of opposition." Crowded galleries listened in in- terest to the Premier's presentation which required an hour and three- quarters, stressing the surplus for the last financial year of $476,000, predict- ing another surplus despite the-, dii fionli times and accomplished with- out a single cent of new taxattau. The Premier also pointed out that when revenues permit, taxation then will be reduced, and while a report had in- dicated the surplus would amount to $1400.00:0, he said if that had been possible then taxation would have been reduced. , ,The surplus for the current year is -; based on estimated revenues of $51,- - U79,000 and expenditures of $50,564,- 1000, while the surplus for the last year represents Ile difference be- tween revenues amounting to $511,- -317130'511t, and expenditures totalling '$50,89i6s60d, Last year's public ac- counts •shows a reduction of $5,300,- 000 in ordinary expenditure and a $9,- 000,000 cut in capital exepnditure from the 19322 figure; a decreased revenue of $5039,4014; decreased liqu- or revenue to the extent of $1/43,745,000; retirement of $115,000,000 in New York Treasury bills; expenditure of $3 06317,000 on free grants and ser- vices for public welfare; additional Hydro reserves of $69,900000 and 'continuation of all services at usual • *levels despite economic depression. 'Gross debt of the province is set at $3192;000,000 with net debt of $299,000- 000. Ilydinary revenues decreased - $2, S03,11! 11 from the antohnt collected in 11932, the chief decreases arising in fines and fees under ,Legal Offices in- spection $38,000; bonus and timber dues $799,000; corporation tali $482,- 000; racetracks $31116,000; land trans- • fer tax -$5l2,000, etc, 'Revenue in- creases occurred in crown lands, leases and licenses $78,000; !'tines !Department assessments $1140,000; t chicle license, • etc. $414,000; wine tax $&6,000; succession duties $1045,000 and stocic transfer tax !3'515;000. The Premier also :defended the government against criticisrim of the recent t$44000,000 loan, 'declaring that the government had not favored the large corporations and investment houses. (Figures showed that a good percentage of bhe b'ond's had gone en - to the 'hand's o8the small investor. Thus loan, too, had ;cost less than any loan floated in many years' With a view to removing alleged unfair conrinission c'h'arges and other abuses in the sale of livestock, the Agriculture Committee approved a resolution asking the Stevens inquiry at Ottawa to inquire into packers, stock years commission men and all conditions pertaining to marketing of live stock. The motion asking for the inquiry vas moved and seconded by H. .J. Davis, and John A. Craig, Conservatives, East 'Elgin and North Lanark, Data an alleged unfair real - logs and charges are to be submitted to the committee which will present it to the Stevens inquiry, The com- mittee also endorsed a scale of reduc- ed commission ,charges, !Albert V. Waters, Conservative, north Cochrane, in speaking ,o:11 the budget debate, urged the government to have control. of settlers in North- ern Ontario vested in the Ontario Department of Agriculture and adop- tion of a plan to improve conditions for northern settlers so that the Pro- vince would have farmers and not road menders. Mr. 'Waters asked that settlers in the, agricultural areas that settlers in the agricultural areas that settlers in the agricultural areas that woolsi be developed be grouped in order to form communities, the town- ships to, 'be surveyed into 100 -acre lots with a narrow frontage, This scheme, he said, should be based on the present policy existing in the province of Quebec, where he said remarkable results have been at- tained, Frank Spence, Conservative mem- ber for Fort William, presented a plan for the provincial and federal government's to complete about 400 miles of the Trans= -Canada north- western Ontario highway in order to provide relief work and take many people off direct relief. Mr, Spence said the cost would be $10,0004000 shared -by the two governments, the work would' employ 40,000 over a five -months' period. (Hon, Leopold Macaulay, Minister of Highways, in introducing amend- ments to the Public Commercial Ve- hicles Act, announced that he is re- questing 'the provincial department of labor to investigate the matter of minimum rates of pay for drivers in order that adequate pay will be in- sured under the new regulations. If this minimum wage is set up, it will be the first established for men in Ontario. The new regulations fix the amount, nature and class of insur- ance or bond which shall be provid- ed or carried by commercial vehicle owners; publication, filing and post- ing of tariffs or tolls and the payment of tolls, and provision for the anini mum rates of pay or wages for driv- ers. The act is the result of the inter- provincial conference held at Ot- tawa recently, attended by represen- 1 ,Ithiedes throughout Canada, - straight up like a gigantic blow torch and made the country as bright as clay within a radius of a mile and a half. The fire could be plainly seen from !Loveland, thirty utiles away, and the reflection thrown against the sky made a beautiful picture, from Lookout and Genesee mountains just west of the city of ;Denver, Many Denver motorists went •to those van- tage points to view the 'blazing won- der, Travellers camping at North Platte, Nebraska, three hundred miles 'from the fire, reported reflection plainly visible sin 'the western sky; they said it reminded .them of the delicate tinting of a beautiful sunset, The noise of the fire was deafening. I't has been compared to the roar of the surf on a wild coast or the rumble of a fast train passing over a trestle, magnified many times; conversation within a hundred yards of the well was out of the question. The 'terrific force shook the ground for a wide area and made men stagger and reel is they moved about. The unusual sight of a burning well proved a great drawing card, and thousands of sightseers thronged about it day and night. Hot dog stands; soda-waterstatrds and urchins selling pop corn and ice-cream cones all did a thriving business. The heat. from the -well made people thirsty. and any kind of drink was in demand. !Fighting a gas well fire is en.inter- esting undertaking, .Modern ingenuity uses three weapons—dynamite, nitro- glycerin and steam, The theory of the 'first two weapons is that a great ex- plosion at the mouth of the well would make a sufficient break be- tween the flame and its source of sup- ply to snuff out the blazing torch, .'1s for steam, if a sufficient quantity can be forced into the flame under tre ntendous 'pressure, the oxygen will be shut off and the fire will smother, After the arrival of the asbestos clothing the struggle began. Sunday morning, July 27, the workmen set up two poles, one on each side of the fire and as near as the heat would permit men to worlc, ,Between the two poles they stretched a cable that passed directly through the centre of the roaring tongue of flame. The pur- pose of the cable was to provide •a trolley whereby a charge of two hun- dred pounds of dynamite might be pulled into the centre of the fire and exploded there. But before the dyna- mite could be made ready to start an its journey the cable had melted in the middle. Another was made ready, but one of the poles fell, and that at- tempt also ended in failure. Night came on, and the white -clad figures •of the workmen—a pictures- que throng in the glare of the fierce flames—prepared for a third attempt. This time the prospect of success seemed better, The cable, stronger than before, was in place, and the powerful charge of dynamite w -as ready. Slowly it started toward the fire; as it gained momentum -the great crowd held its 'breath and waited, On and on it glided until it was withir fifteen. or twenty feet of the flame; then it began to sink; the heat was again melting the cable. At last it rested on the ground, and then it caught fire. "Will dynamite burn, or will it ex- plode?" the spectators asked one FIGHTING A GAS WELL FIRE Tn 11924 in northern Colorado an oil cotripany was drilling to learn whether the ground contained ail, 'When they had reached a depth of more than four thousand feet a fierce 'torrent of gas rushed to the surface and with a mighty roar shot high into the air, For thirty-six days the "discovery well" ran wild before 4 workmen were ab'le'to place a pond- erous cap on it and hold the tremend- ous pressure under control. Before they succeeded the gas began to change to oil, and the countryside was sprayed with the precious liquid. I -t has been estimated ' that the gas that escaped during the thirty-six -days before the 'well was capped would have !Cad a retail value of al- most 'three million dollars if it could have been marketed in a great city, like Denver, which is only sixty miles away. When an oil company is testing out new ground it drills several wells to determine roughly the boundaries of the field, So it happened that a few utiles from the discoverey well on a plat knotvn as the Mitchell farm another crew of workmen were r'crilling. When the drill was more than four thousand feet below the surface that well also "blew itself in" without warning and a nighty vol - tune of gas spouted from it. No one! knows just how mulch escaped, per- haps a hundred million cubic feet -a day, Then began another battle of brains against the great natural force to cap the well and stop the enorm- ous waste, tWhen on the 23rd of juty the might valve was ready to be put into place the gas took fire from some unknown cause and flames .leaped seventy-five feet into the air. That was no ordinary fire. It was fed by an almost inexhaustible flood of gas rushing upward with in- describable force, and would burn far years. One geologist estimated that there were more than twenty- two billion cubic feet of gas stored in the great reservoir ready to feed the flame. The Beat was intolerable; workmen could not get near enough to the well to accomplish anything, The oil company wired to a factory in Illinois to !manufacture suits of as- bestos for their workmen and ship them by air mail at the earliest pos- sible moment, By July 29 the suits were arriving at Cheyenne, Wyoming, at the tate of one a day, Shipped at Chicago in the evening, they reached Cheyenne at a quarter past five 'the next morning and were loaded into a waiting automobile and rushed to the well -thirty miles away. Those suits were the heaviest consignments that up to that time had been shipped by air mail, The postage on them rang- ed from thirty-eight to forty-eight dollars. Asbestos shoes were shipped by air mail from a factory in New Jersey. The worlc of subduing the giant gasser vas all done by men clad from head to foot in .fireproof clothing. At night the workmen made grotesque figures in the fierce light of the flames. ' REMZEIERMIIIMM Check • We Are Selling Quality Books Books are Well Made, Carbon is Clean and Copies Readily: stylei; Carbon Leaf and Black Back. _Prices as Low as You Can Anywhere. Get our Quotation on Y sur Next Orcler. Seaf rth SEAFORTH, ONTARIO, at W1 Mr,%AtalS,, All Get t, News another, 'For several minutes it burned, a; the crowd began to disperse, ico v inced that nothing spectacular w' going to happen. Then, 'ab'ove the ro sf the fire sounded ti muffled hoot The charge had 'exploded, ha-, beit to one side of the fire, it seemed have no more effact on it than small boy's fire cracker would hat had, Yet it did have an effect.When th 'fire started the valve at the moot of the well had been partly close the blast weakened it and allow+e more gas to escape. And so at eleve o'clock when the weary worker withdrew to await the coarsing of at other day before restuniog the figh they left a flaming torch burnin brighter and shooting higher in ai than ever before, and they went t their rest with -a more deafening roa as their lullaby, Then next day they found that th casing was leaking gas at the side so that not only a great blaze sho upward but a gigantic collar of dam encircled the well and made it doubt difficult to approach. What was to b done ? The man in command decide to use 'steam, It might be necessarn to blow the entire valve off the heat of she casing so as to have a vertiea flame to fight rather than the grea torch ornamented with a broad fring of roaring flame seventy-five fee wide. The work began, Six great boiler. weregathered rotund the well Iron the localfield, and eight more,. wer ordered from Casper, Wyoming. Ga. was piped from the diseoverey wet to 'be used in heating the boilers, am a large force of men laid a pipe ;ini from a well a mile away to supply the water. The battery was set up at a safe distance west of the fire, anal each boiler was connected with a large steel casing leading toward the burning well. .lien worked in fever- ish haste; their leaders urged them to unusual exertion. The reason for haste was that the discovery well flowed gas at the rate of eighty-two million cubic feet a day for seventeen days, and then the gas had begun to turn to oil. The Mitchell well was expected to do likewise. As a matter of fact as the early clays of August passed and the seventeenth day drew near a trace of dark smoke could be seen in the flame; it showed the pres- ence of burning oil. An oil fire is harder to overcome than a gas fire. On Friday, the Sth of August, thir teen 'boilers were in place, pipe lines were finished, and everything was ready for the great experiment. Here are the accounts of the next few ex- citing days: 'Saturday, August 9. The gas was turned on for a trial of the battery with the expectation that the attack would be made the following day. Quantities of mud and water were also in readiness to be pumped into the cellar of the well to aid in fight- ing the fire, •Indecision as to the method of exploding a heavy charge of dynamite over the flames, which is a part of the fire -fighting plan, caused a postponement. "Monday, August 111. A quantity of gelatin, a form of nitroglycerin, was prepared as all explosive. The plan is to place this .explosive in a can and then place the can in a larger container filled with water so as to prevent a premature explosion as it approaches the fire: TWO cables, each with a small trolley, are in place„ one on either side of the fire. After the flames have been diminished by steam, mud and water, the plan is to set off a charge of this explosive by 5means of -electric wires on each side of the flame in the hope that the -con- cussion will snuff it out. "Tuesday, August 12. Inability to direct the contents of the thirteen high-pressure steam boilers exactly at the centre of the 'base of the Mit- chell gasser fire caused the postpone- ment of an attempt to snuff out the torch with nitroglycerin. The steam was to be directed at the lower, fire where gas -is escaping through the shattered control head before the ni- tro charge was exploded by the up- per blaze, When t'he asbestos -clothed then carried the steam nozzles into the fire they were unable to smother the the blaze, The explosive charge was withheld. "Wednesday, August '113. No at- tempt Was made to !b'last the well to- day on account of the blaze coming out beneath the gate valve and keep- ing the ground so hot that even if the fire were snuffed out it would ig- nite again immedia'tely from the red- hot furnace of the ground. It may be necessary to shoot off the gate valve entirely and open up the whale well, This would carry all the ,fire up sev- eral feet front the ground rnskmn:g it much easier to extinguish the blaze than at present, "Thursday, August 14, Plans were made Thursday to blow off the cas- ing head and control valve of the burning 1Jtchell gasser with nitro- ycerin in order that easier access to the fire might be had. It may take several shots to tear off - the head, This heroic action was determined upon when it becaane apparent that, the oil spray was increasing rapidly, gi and that Curless the gas blaze was ex- tinguished soon there was tgreat dan- ger of its becoming an ail 'fire,' ; One charge of explosive fire this morning: failed to budge the casing sap..N•eith- er did it affect the .blazing pillar of !lire, Experts admit that the plan to 'blow the ,casing head off is dangerous- and might probably destroy the well" ' -The newspapers went to Press, Thursday afternoon without complet- ing the story of the d'ay's work. It looked as if the ,fight were far from ended. Butat ten o'clock the .ringing of bells, the blowing of whistles, the honking of automobile horns and the shouting of mein told that the fight- er had won, -Sten clothed in fire- proof suits of asbestos walked in thick darkness where lint a inc menti before was t'he brilliant glare of the greatest bonfire ever kindled and tried to shout their joy abovethe roar of escaping gas, Water played on the ground round the well, and men held their breath lest some red- hot casing should again ignite the gas. Let us see just how' the victory• was won. 'Tree times that Thursday afternoon powerful charges of ex- plosives were used . to blow off the broken valve that capped the well, and each time the valve showed not the slightest effect, Night came on, 'but preparations were made for the final attempt, The cables upon which the explosives were drawn were shifted so as to give a slightly dif- ferent angle to the force of the dis- charge, •A; hevy charge of nitroglycerin was secured to a two-inch pipe," says a newspaper account. "Thi_ e'plosivc in turn was incased in a cast-iron casing. Water was forcedinto the casing through a hose from a pump and allotted to circulate so. that the explosive would not go off premat- urely. The casing then was dragged into position in the gas flow and the explosive placed directly over the casing head in the hope that the valve' would be torn away, When the -nitro glycerin was detonated by electricity the casing that contained the explos- ive was ripped apart, .and the force_ of the explosion struck the gas flow from such an angle that the flames literally were blown out." -It is estimated that approximately f,.nr hundred and forty million cubic. feet of gas went up in flames during, the twenty-two days that fire ,burned-, The oil company estimated the money loss at four hundred and forty thousand dollars. U. S. AIR MAIL SUSPENDED Washington. —.Acting on instruc-- tions from President Roosevelt, Gen- eral Foulois, chief of air corps, temp- -orarily suspended all United States Army air mail flights, pending the.- drafting he:drafting of a new, curtailed schedule to insure the fliers' safety. -Officials immediately set to work outlining a modified schedule to meet Mr. 'Roosevelt's command, that "deaths in the Arniy Air Corps must stop." The' suspension of flying is expected to last about three days. 'Either Wednesday or Thursday the army again will take the air on about 112 of the 18 routes now maintained - 'Fewer trips are expected to, be made over the transcontinental routes, 'Foulois' orders were issued soon af ter Colonel and Mrs. Charles Lind- bergh took off for Newark after a. two-day stay in the capital during which the noted aviator conferred with Secretary George Dern of the • War Department and gave his ideas on how army aviation could be im— proved. (Personnel and engineering officers,. at Foulois' direction, .are checking' carer all mets and machines in the Air Corps and seleoted only All pilots and! All planes for use on the new routes. 'Professor: "Tlhedifference b'etweetY a :poor plan and a millionaire—" Student: "Yes, 'I know all about that, One worries over his next meal and the other over his last 1" Teacher: 'Can anyone tell what a bridgegroom ns ? Small 113'oy: IPIease, .miss, a thing: they use at a 'wedding. "John's working for a Manufactur— ing concern."' "Wdiat''s 'he doing ?" "'Sprinkling dust on bottles of •old: wine," Vicar (to as'sembled'Sunday school) "Is there any 'b'oy who would like to join the 'church' choir?" IBoy: 4"Please, sir, I would," Vicar:' "Can you sing?" !Boy: "No, sir, that's the only draw- back." The IvranysPtirpose Oil.—,Both in the house and stable there are scores of uses for Dr. Thonas' Ec1ectrie'011- Use it for cuts, 'bruises, burns, scalds, • the pains of rheumatism and sciatica, sore throat and chest, 'Horses are li- - *b1e veru largely Vo similar ailmentsr and mishaps ,as afflict ntanikind, arid' '" equally alienable to the healing 'nflucnce of this fine old remedy which has made thousands of firer friends during the past fifty years: