Thirty guests were asleep inside the Seitz Hotel near Marion, Indiana, when a powerful gas explosion tore through the two-story brick building.
The outer walls were blown apart, and the second floor collapsed onto the businesses below. Within moments, the wreckage caught fire, trapping guests beneath fallen floors, shattered bricks, and the burning roof. Escaping natural gas continued to feed the flames, making it nearly impossible for rescuers to reach those buried inside.
Three people died in the disaster, two others were fatally injured, and ten suffered serious wounds. For an hour, the bodies of the hotel’s owner and his wife remained visible through the flames before rescuers could recover them.
Buried In Wreckage
MARION, Indiana. — Three people have been burned to death, two fatally and ten badly injured in a hotel fire here. The cause was a gas explosion. The building was destroyed.
The explosion occurred in the Seitz hotel building at 38th Street and Home Avenue, which was wrecked.
The dead are: Charles Beitel, proprietor of the hotel, Mrs. Charles Beitel, his wife, and James Devlin, proprietor of the cafe. Edward Gaskill and L.H. Hobis, an oil well contractor, were fatally injured.
The hotel was near the national military home, three miles from the center of the city. Natural gas is said to have escaped from a pipe line that passed near the building, the basement being filled and when the rooms on the first floor began to fill with the gas it was ignited by the jets.
The building was a two-story brick, having five business rooms on the first floor, the hotel occupying the second floor. There were thirty guests at the hotel.
The outer walls were blown out, the second floor falling on the first, with the roof on it. The guests were under the wreckage, which at once ignited. They were asleep in their rooms when the explosion occurred.
Rescuers had great difficulty in taking the injured from the wreck. The gas could not be shut off and fed the fire, which continued to gain headway.
The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Beitel could be seen through the flames and wreckage for an hour before they could be recovered.
Source: The Madison Daily Leader. Madison, S.D. January 22, 1904.
