American Lightning by Howard Blum Read Free Book Online Page B

rooming-house roof. Only it was too short. It almost reached across the alleyway but not quite. So one man lay down on the rooming-house roof and leaned over the edge, his arms dangling in the air as he grasped the ladder. Behind him several men held his legs in place. The ladder now stretched across the alleyway. The man holding the ladder had powerful forearms, but it still required all his will, all his concentration, to keep the ladder steady. It seemed impossible that he would be able to hold the ladder in place for long. But there was no alternative. It was the only way.
    One by one the engravers crawled on their hands and knees across the ladder. They tried not to rush. They tried not to panic as the smoke intensified. When the ladder started to shake, they kept going. They knew they could not stop. There was no other escape. All six men made it across the alleyway to the rooming house.

    Harry Chandler was also fortunate. The assistant publisher had left the building only moments before the first explosion. His father-in-law, Harrison Gray Otis, had not been in the building either. He was in Mexico, sent by President William Howard Taft to represent the United States at the Centennial of American Independence.

    Churchill Harvey-Elder was the last man to jump from the building. Recently promoted to assistant night editor, he had earlier returned from dinner at Tony’s Spanish Kitchen on North Broadway to find his mother in the newsroom. Proud of her son, she wanted to see him working at his new, important job. She watched him with a beaming pride for a while, and then he walked her to the door.
    Nearly two hours later he was in the city room when the explosion occurred. He tried to escape down a flight of stairs, but the flames pushed him back. In just an instant the flesh was seared from his arms and chest. He retreated, moving back from the fire until he was up against the windows on the First Street side of the building. There nowhere else to go, so he crawled out onto the ledge. It was hot to his touch. He was three stories above the ground. The fire was moving toward him. Smoke attacked him. His burns were incredibly painful. He did not know what to do. He had run out of options.
    Then he heard shouts coming from the street. He looked down and saw two fireman and a policeman holding a net. From this height, the net looked very small. But they were yelling at him, pleading with him, to jump. Harvey-Elder realized it was his only chance. He jumped.
    He missed the net. He landed on the concrete. But he was still alive when they carried his body to the ambulance. He hung on to life at Clara Barton Hospital for a few more hours, and then at seven-thirty that morning he died. Harvey-Elder’s was the final death.

    In all, twenty-one people died. They were editors, linotype operators, printers, pressmen, compositors, telegraph operators, and Harry Chandler’s secretary, who had decided to linger in the office for a few minutes after his boss had left. Sixteen of the dead men left behind widows and children. Seventeen people were injured. The building was a ruin.

    But there still was a paper to get out. Eyes brimming with tears, Harry Chandler addressed the survivors. He assembled them on a street within view of the smoldering building. The air was heavy with a noxious, charred smell. The ambulances, bells clanging, continued to take away the dead, their colleagues.
    The publisher, Chandler explained, had been fearful that the paper would be attacked. As a contingency, he had months earlier set up an auxiliary newsroom and composition plant. It was just a few blocks away on College Street. The owners of the
Los Angeles Herald
had agreed that the plates could be run off their presses. They had two hours to get the first edition out.

    As Harvey-Elder lay dying at Clara Barton Hospital, a one-page special edition of the
Los Angeles Times
ran off the borrowed presses. An eight-column streamer stretched across the entire