Oil companies burned it off into the atmosphere. But people were allowed to tap into pipelines carrying the waste gas and use it for fuel in homes and buildings. By using the free gas, the school was able to save about three hundred dollars a month in heating costs.
Miles Toler is the director of the local museum.
MILES TOLER: "You get the mindset of people who, even though you were a very rich school district, we're in the thirties, we've just come out of the Depression and we're saving money any way we can."
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: On the afternoon of March eighteenth, nineteen thirty-seven, students in the lower grades had already been dismissed. The high school students were nearly finished for the day.
London High School had an estimated eight hundred fifty students. Many of them were preparing for a big sports event and were not in the building. Several parents had gathered in a nearby building for a meeting.
At three-seventeen that afternoon, a machine shop teacher turned on a piece of electrical equipment, causing a spark. That spark ignited gas that had been leaking from the school's pipeline. No one knew about the leak because the gas had no smell.
The explosion that followed blew the roof off the school. Miles Toler says the roof crushed the front of the building as it crashed back to the ground.
MILES TOLER: "The blast literally eliminates the front half of the school."
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25