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Home : Quarterly Archives : Volume 16 |
Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society |
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Source: Fall 1978 Volume 16 Number 3, Pages 57–64 When the Fireworks Factory in Devon Blew Up Noise from the blast, it was reported, was heard for fifty miles, in places as far away as Trenton, where the windows in the State House were rattled, and Wilmington. In southern New Jersey some people thought there had been an explosion at the DuPont plants along the Delaware River. Broken glass from the concussion was reported in West Philadelphia. Bits of red paper and other debris were found in Norristown. Windows were shattered in practically every building in Devon, as well as in hundreds of houses along the Main Line from Wayne to Berwyn. Countless homes were shaken: dishes broken, pictures tossed from the walls, candlesticks and other bric-a-brac toppled to the floor. Plaster was torn loose from ceilings and walls. People walking along the street were knocked off their feet: motorists on the Lancaster Pike were pushed off the road as if shoved by a sudden gust of wind. The cause of the blast was a series of tremendous and terrible explosions at the Pennsylvania Fireworks Display Company, Inc., located on the north side of Old Lancaster Road in Devon just north of the underpass where the road is crossed by the railroad tracks. At a few minutes after ten o'clock in the morning of Thursday, April 3, 1930, shortly after the delivery of thirty kegs of black powder, three devastating explosions, in quick succession, shook the plant. Ten people were killed and scores of others injured. A pall of smoke, lighted up from time to time by exploding fireworks, covered the valley as flames enveloped the remaining buildings on the property. One of the principal owners of the company, Alexander Vardaro, was at the property with his son Victor, secretary of the company, and his daughter Antoinette at the time of the explosion, and was stunned by the blast, but escaped with only minor injuries. Vardaro had been making fireworks in Devon for about twelve years, starting in 1918 on a small scale in the kitchens of the workers' homes. As the business grew, he shortly afterwards built a small factory with several small frame shacks for storage on the seven acre site, the operation at that time being known as the Devon Fireworks Company. By 1930 the plant, now the Pennsylvania Fireworks Display Company, Inc., had expanded to include a total of fourteen metal and frame buildings, including eight larger buildings and six smaller five-foot square sheds for the storage of the various ingredients used in the manufacture of firecrackers, torpedoes, aerial bombs, pinwheels, rockets, and other fireworks the company produced. This was not the first explosion at the fireworks company. About two years earlier, in June 1928, according to one report, there was an explosion which blew the roof off one of the buildings and into the road, the explosion also causing the building to catch fire. Fortunately, no one was in the building at the time, nor was anyone injured. The building was so badly damaged that it was never rebuilt, however. A year later, in June 1929, in a letter to the Bureau of Inspection of the Department of Labor in Harrisburg, the general secretary of the nearby Neighborhood League, Alda A. Makarov, expressed concern over the alleged employment of minors by the company, also stating that there had been "several minor explosions" at the site and that she felt there was danger both to the children and to the district immediately adjoining the property. (In reply for the Bureau of Inspection, Elsie F. Middleton reported that inspections of the factory by the State had showed that the proprietor of the plant seemed to be doing everything to comply with the law and that no evidence of violations of the law had been found.) But while this may not have been the first explosion there, it certainly was the last one. After the blast, the entire area was likened by army veterans to the No-Man's Land of World War I. Every bit of vegetation was destroyed, large trees ripped apart, their branches shattered and torn off. The force of the exploding fireworks and powder left great holes, like shell craters, in the black, pockmarked earth. Except for the office and one concrete foundation, there was not a timber projecting more than two feet above the ground to indicate where buildings had been. For some time afterwards, visitors, as one newspaper described it, "stood and talked or merely gazed with awe-struck eyes at the scenes of ruin on every side". The proprietor of the plant, Luigi Peruzzi of Devon, was at first reported to have been away from the site when the explosion occurred, but was later found to be one of the ten persons killed. The others were identified as Josephine Capelli, Angela Chicarelli, Carmela D'Antonio, and Jennie Ricci, of Devon; Mary Hopkins, of Berwyn; Anna Sittimio, of Paoli, Alfred Salamone, of Norristown, John Furia, of West Philadelphia; and Vitiantonia d'Amenito, of Upper Darby. Response to the disaster was almost immediate. Firemen and fire trucks from all along the Main Line -- Paoli, Berwyn, Wayne, Radnor, and even Bryn Mawr and Ardmore -- rushed to the scene, the firemen frequently risking their lives "in the inferno of blazing fireworks" as they fought to control the fire and keep it from spreading. To keep the interested and curious spectators, who also rushed to the area to find out what had happened, from impeding the rescue work, the immediate area was quickly blocked off and patrolled by the state and township police, with additional help from cadets from the Valley Forge Military Academy. Cars passing on the Lincoln Highway were commandeered to take some of the more seriously injured to the Bryn Mawr Hospital. The exploding fireworks also scattered burning debris over a wide area, causing numerous field fires in the vicinity, obviously adding to the difficulties of the firemen and others engaged in rescue and relief work. The fireworks plant was not the only site to suffer major damage as a result of the explosion. The Eagle Signal Tower, the control center for the interlocking switches on the Pennsylvania Railroad, was in the line of destruction, force from the blast knocking the signalman on duty, Max Schwartz, from his chair. All the overhead wires were also knocked down across the tracks, and it was several hours before service could be resumed. The windows in a train stopped at the Devon station were also blown in by the blast, the flying glass injuring a number of passengers in the train. Several small houses and residences along Old Lancaster Road, across from the fireworks company or adjacent to it, were either levelled or so badly damaged beyond repair, twisted and torn from their foundations, that they had to be razed to the ground. The expensive home of Stephen Fuguett, on the Lancaster Pike at Valley Forge Road, the colonial mansion of John Cornelius, in which members of the Cornelius family had lived for 104 years, a hundred yards to the east, and the home of Guy R. Wheeler, all prominent residents of the area, were virtually wrecked. Other homes seriously damaged included the mansions of other well-known families, among them the home of William A. Gray, an attorney in Philadelphia, that of Mrs. Charles M. Lea, widow of a retired publisher and philanthropist, where the extent of the damage was estimated to be over $50,000, and that of Mrs. William McCone, whose home "was wrecked almost beyond repair". Homes as far away as Berkeley Road, including houses owned by D. Alleva and Emidio DeJoseph, were badly wrecked inside. And, as already noted, hundreds of homes and nearby business establishments had windows, in some cases heavy plate glass windows, broken and plaster torn loose and strewn about, leaving the bare skeletons of lath on walls and ceilings. Probably the biggest business property loss, aside from the fireworks company itself, was suffered by the Benjamin C. Betner Paper Box Manufacturing Company, located only about a quarter of a mile away on the south side of the Lincoln Highway at Valley Forge Road. Over 1700 panes of glass there were reported shattered and the steel sashes just recently put into the building blown out. The interior of the offices of the C. A. Lobb and Sons lumber yard, also only a short distance away at the northeast corner of the Lincoln Highway and Old Lancaster Road, was similarly ruined. Immediately there were speculation, conflicting statements, semi-expert opinion, as well as a number of rumors -- improper testing procedures in the mixing operations, experimental work on new types of aerial bombs to be made at the plant -- as to what caused the explosions. Although at the outset Alexander Vardaro observed that it was doubtful that the cause could ever be fully ascertained, a Coroner's Jury was impanelled by Chester County Judge Herbert C. Ford to investigate the blast. The jury included Jesse Cox, a Malvern Borough councilman and chemist at the J. Bishop Company in Malvern; Harry Hendrickson, the Malvern station agent; Harry Maloney, a clerk from Coatesville; Lester Moffett, a lieutenant in the Pennsylvania National Guard; James Sell, chief of the Malvern Fire Department; and Harvey Shank, also a Malvern Borough councilman. Many of the early theories as to the cause centered on the delivery, apparently in error, of an abnormally large amount of black powder to the plant on the morning of the explosion, thirty kegs being delivered instead of the usual three to five kegs. However, S. J. Ryan, head of the Quarryman's Supply Company in Norristown, which had delivered the powder to the fireworks company, told reporters that "to think that 30 kegs of black powder, that is 750 pounds, could have caused it (destruction of this magnitude) is ridiculous". (This opinion was later corroborated in the testimony to the jury of Ralph Ashton, assistant to the director of explosives at DuPont, who testified that in his opinion such a large explosion could not have been caused by black powder unless there were quantities of 10,000 to 15,000 pounds on the site, and also in the testimony of Robert W. Hackett, of the Inspection Division of the State Department of Labor and Industry.) A new lead developed on Saturday when Chief of Police James Nugent, of Tredyffrin Township, was rummaging through the debris at the scene of the explosion and found in the wreckage a gas stove with all its jets fully open. The stove, which was of a type used for heating purposes, had been blown more than fifty feet from its original location. With Chester County District Attorney John Guss conducting much of the questioning, the jury heard testimony from about a dozen witnesses altogether. Among them were William Kneibel, of Norristown, who testified about the delivery of the powder to the plant; two experts on explosives, Ralph Ashton, of DuPont, and William Weise, a former fireworks powder mixer with long experience at the Victor Fireworks Company in Elkton, Maryland; and two employees of the Inspection Division of the State Department of Labor and Industry, Robert W. Hackett and H. H. Lippincott, both of whom again affirmed that in their opinion the plant was not being operated in violation of the law, although Hackett also commented that the "regulations are probably not stringent enough for thorough safety". He also added that in his opinion there was too great a quantity of explosives on hand at the plant, the term explosives including both the ingredients from which the fireworks were made and the finished product awaiting shipment. Chief of Police Nugent also testified about his discovery of the gas stove, while Victor Vardaro gave information about the layout of the plant, the arrangements inside the various buildings, including the locations of the stoves, and described the processes and ingredients used in the manufacture of fireworks, though he could not give any details about the amounts of powder and other ingredients on hand. He did declare that there was no large quantity of aerial bombs on hand, however, and that he knew of no dynamite or TNT. Other witnesses included Peter Nugent, a brother of the police chief, who had installed the gas jets in the drying room, Stephen Fuguett, and Alexander and Antoinette Vardaro. Although the jury was unable, after its consideration of all the evidence, to determine, with certainty, the cause of the disaster, it concluded that the explosion "probably was caused by the use of gas stoves for heating purposes in a building known as the 'workshop' and the use of gas jets in the drying room. The greatness of the explosions," it added, "was caused by large quantities of finished bombs and other fireworks and also the large quantity of black powder stored on the premises." The jury also recommended that "a stringent law be passed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to cover the manufacture of fireworks, taking into consideration the location of plants and the quantity of raw and finished materials to be carried at one time, and that a plant of the kind be subjected to frequent and rigid inspection". In the aftermath of the disaster, several ironic and strange twists were revealed. On a tragic note, it was reported that Peter Chicarelli, the father of Angela Chicarelli who was one of the persons killed in the explosion, had had a "premonition" and had urged his daughter to leave her job with the company. Another of those killed, Josephine Capelli, had planned to announce her engagement to Achille Pizza within the next two weeks. On the other hand, Esther Sims, who had worked at the company wrapping firecrackers and making "dago" bombs and torpedoes, had left its employ on just the preceding Saturday after working there for over two years. The two brothers of Chief of Police Nugent had also been working on jobs at the plant, but fortunately had been delayed on that particular day and had not reached the site by the time the explosion occurred. Several others, including Buck Weaver, a well-known local baseball player and umpire, similarly reported last-minute delays or changes in plans that kept them from the immediate area on that fateful Thursday morning. Equally fortunate was Mrs. Thomas Corkhill, who lived in a house on the Lea estate; the house was destroyed except for the kitchen, into which Mrs. Corkhill had entered from another part of the house just before the explosion. Perhaps one of the oddest twists, though, resulted from the peculiar pattern of destruction from the blasts, which was much heavier to the east than to the west. Some homes only a half-mile or so to the west of the plant, it was reported, were relatively undamaged, while to the east the area of damage extended for five miles. In the same vein, while the large plate glass windows in the three-months old McClure Fahnestock Packard showroom, at the intersection of Conestoga Road and the Lincoln Highway, were demolished, it was reported that the large greenhouses of Alfred M. Campbell, on the other side of the Highway and a shorter distance away from the fireworks plant, escaped serious damage with only a few panes of glass broken. The response of the community to the needs of the victims of the disaster was both immediate and outstanding. As soon as the extent of the damage was evident, help arrived from a number of organizations and various sources. A corps of physicians and nurses from the Bryn Mawr Hospital hurried to the site in an ambulance, moving into one of the damaged homes near to the plant to set up an emergency first aid station. Through the Disaster Committee of the Wayne Branch of the American Red Cross, a temporary office of the Red Cross was set up at the Neighborhood League's Baby Clinic on Grove Avenue in Devon, near to the stricken area, where arrangements were made for families whose homes had been destroyed to be housed with other families in Berwyn and Wayne. At the same time, the Neighborhood League collected many of the now homeless children in the area and took them to its Wayne headquarters, where they were kept all day and entertained by volunteers until families could be reunited. The Anthony Wayne Post 418 of the American Legion also began to provide care for others of the 200 men, women and children made homeless by the blast. Cots and blankets were made available by the Navy Department and Marine Corps Quartermaster in Philadelphia, being sent out to the area in a convoy of t rucks. The parish house of St. Mary's Protestant Episcopal Church was opened for all families whose homes had been wrecked by the explosion. The Devon branch of the Needlework Guild supplied needed garments, and people and businesses throughout the area answered generously and appeal for bedding and blankets and donated other supplies for families suffering from the blast. Boy Scout Troop Paoli 1 assisted, as a troop, in the rescue work and helped to clean up the debris at damaged homes. Aid was also given by the Chamber of Commerce and many other organizations. By ten o'clock on the night of the disaster it was reported that not a single person requiring a place to sleep, clothing, food or other services as a result of the explosion had been overlooked or neglected. It was estimated by the Red Cross that $40,000 would be needed for relief work to help the stricken families; in less than three weeks a community fundraising drive sponsored by the Wayne branch of the Red Cross produced over $38,000 in donations from individuals and business establishments in the area. It was a real community effort in the face of what was described as "one of the worst disasters ever experienced in this section" — when the fireworks factory in Devon blew up. TopSources: Files of the Wayne Suburban, West Chester Daily Local News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin WPA Survey of Historic Sites along the Lincoln Highway |
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