DANGER FROM LIGHTNING IN BLASTING.


Although the accident in the tunnel in process of construction at Union
Hill by the New York, Ontario, and Western Railroad Company, which took
place on Tuesday afternoon, was happily attended with no loss of life or
serious injuries to the men employed in the shaft, it reads a new lesson
as to the firing of charges of powder by electricity, and one that
should be carefully noted by railway and civil engineers, and even
by the torpedo service of the United States. The exact cause of the
explosion has scarcely been fully and accurately set forth by the
various reports of the affair.

It appears that the wires usually employed lo supply the electric lamps
in the excavation were used for the purpose of firing the charges, being
disconnected from the electric light system for the moment and connected
with the explosives. As a rule, six charges were fired together, those
of the afternoon relay of men being exploded at very regular hours--the
last usually at 5:45 P.M. There were only sixteen men in the shaft,
and the work of connecting the wires had commenced, when the flash of
lightning that occurred at 5:42 P.M., suddenly charged the conductors
and produced the explosion.

There were two flashes of lightning between the hours of 5 and 6 o'clock
Tuesday afternoon, the first taking place at 5:23, and the second
nineteen minutes later. The former, according to testimony elicited by