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HALIFAX DISASTER RECORD OFFICE
CHRONICLE BUILDING
HALIFAX, N. S.

the heavy wooden doors at the sides were smashed inwards, and the duck-boards on the floor were smashed. McLennan went inside. There was no daylight. Had to learn the condition of things by the feel. Everything was upset. He had "sense enough not to light a match". "Things all smashed up". He moved the "kindling-wood", and went back again to the square, looking for a working party. Saw a naval officer with about twenty blue-jackets. Asked for a detail and went back to the magazine. His orders were" Get your kindling-wood out of that, and light no matches." The heater-house, a small building attached to the magazine on the western side, was all broken up. Here there was a fire- "Honest-to-God fire", with a du/t c/ [duct] four feet square leading to the magazine. McLennan got one of two chemical extinguishers and put the fire out. (The heater-house had a boiler in it similar to a Gurney range, used for heating a house. The doors were blown open, and the roof smashed in). The next thing McLennan knew the working party was going through the hole in the fence, and the only reason he didn't go was because the hole was blocked. He thought that they had discovered a fire inside the magazine, of course. McLennan reflected that there was no use running away. "An hour before I breathed normally." "Scrambled on the roof, it was quite a scramble." The roof was injured to a certain extent. Still had a dread that fire was inside. The crowd in the street had vanished. One moment the street was crowded and the next it was as "empty as the sea." His sentry, Eisnor, "stuck it." He was only a boy, and suffered from the worst case of shell-shock McLennan ever saw. A couple of hours later he collapsed. Was unable to control his hands or even his facial muscles. Eisnor got the second fire extinguisher and aided in putting out the fire. Took out the "kindling-wood". "Most trying time." "Then the C. O. C.