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MG 1 volume 2124 number 215

HALIFAX DISASTER RECORD OFFICE
Archibald MacMechan, F.R.S.C.
Director
Halifax, N.S.


PERSONAL NARRATIVE.

Col. Phinney personally to the Director in H.D.R.O., June 25, 1918

Col. Phinney described his impression of the explosion. It was

"As if a torpedo had struck the train."

The train was run in to the first street. The track was about twenty feet from the street. He marked the place on the plan just before Bridge St. Hundreds came running towards them. They were burned black "as black as if they had been shovelling coal." Blood was running from them. Saw people carrying injured in blankets towards them. The women passengers set to making bandages. They used the towels and sheets belonging to the Pullman and then tore up their underclothes. The water was run off from the engine to bathe the wounds. They did the best they could for them on board and then the men turned to and began to get the people out of the burning houses. The only tools they had were the axes, etc., kept on board cars in case of accident. They prised up wreckage with levers. Between forty and sixty people were rescued from under burning houses, chiefly babies, small children, and old people. Soldiers came, one at a time. Col. Phinney did not know whence. Some were returned soldiers There were about fifty altogether. They were very amenable to discipline, more so than those who had not been abroad. They worked as systematically as possible. If there was no one in a house they let it burn. Some had only one arm or one leg. The rumor of the second alarm reached them not from official source,