52 Report of the Forest Commission. 



have been taken to the improvised hospital at the rink, and here nine members 

 of the medical relief force set to work, while the other two went on to Hinck- 

 ley. Only about 12 patients were being cared for at the rink, but the black- 

 ened, blistered faces, the burned and sightless eyes, the parched and swollen 

 lips, feebly moaning all the time, and the bandaged hands tossing to and fro 

 made a sad sight Nearly all the patients were Scandinavians. Only two of 

 the cases at the rink are considered especially dangerous. The first is that of 

 Mrs. Westerland, who saw her husband and baby drowned before her eyes. 

 The intense mental shock and the inhalation of flames and hot air have ren- 

 dered her recovery extremely doubtful. The other case is that of Mrs. M. A. 

 Greenfield, who was terribly burned about the abdomen, and is now a raving 

 maniac. Mrs. Matilda Oleson was another badly burned patient. She lost 

 five children and her husband, but jumped into the river and managed to save 

 her own life, as well as that of a man nearly suffocated, whom she covered 

 with a blanket. 



Mollie McNeil, of Hinckley, told of what was perhaps the most remarkable 

 escape on record in that day of thrilling escapes. When the fire began to 

 sweep over the town, determined to save what little she could, and not realiz- 

 ing the awful danger which she would encounter, she carried with her three 

 dresses, two hats and a well-filled satchel. As she rushed from the house the 

 smoke was so dense that she could scarcely see a red ahead, and the flames 

 were leaping behind her, but she made for the direction of the St. Paul and 

 Duluth tracks. As she crossed a wagon bridge spanning the road near the 

 tracks, the entire structure burst into a mass of flames. She threw her satchel 

 away and pressed on toward the tracks. Once there, the heat was so intense 

 that she had to drop the dresses, and the hat soon followed. On she sped 

 between the rails, the ties burning beneath her feet, and two seething walls of 

 fire leaping along beside her Again and again she stumbled over dead bodies 

 in the way. At one place she saw a man kneeling in the attitude of prayer, but 

 stone dead and burning. At another, a mother and four children fell 

 exhausted in her path, never to rise again. 



After she had run about a mile and was ready to drop with the heat, she ran 

 against Engineer Root's train, which was just about to back up, after having 

 taken on its load of terror-stricken fugitives. The fireman pulled her into the 

 cab, and when she regained consciousness she was removed to one of the 

 coaches. Had she been a moment later the train would have backed away 

 from her, and she would have perished. The rest of that ride everybody in 

 the Northwest knows to-day, but not all of the sorrowful scenes that took place 

 within the car. Miss McNeil says that she saw one man, crazed with fright 

 and despair, kiss his wife goodby, and then deliberately plunge headlong 

 through the glass window out into the flames. 



The Country a Desolate Waste. 



Leaving Pine City, the United Press correspondent went to Hinckley, 13 

 miles distant, in a handcar. Words utterly fail to describe the desolation that 

 naarked the country on every hand, as he neared the place of the terrible dis- 



