Three foreigners were killed and one seriously injured in a terrific explosion which occurred shortly before 11 o'dloen on Thursday morning in the turbine house at Riverside Power Station. At least four Chinese—the number of fatal Chinese casualties is variously reported between four and 10—also lost their lives, while some 15 others are in hospital, suffering from burns and other injuries.
The foreigners killed were Mr. J. E. Wilson, switchgear superintendent, Mr. C. W. Donaldson, representative of the Parsons turbine manntfacturers, who was sent out from England to erect the new plant, Mr. T. Moodie, charge en-inoer, Ir. W. Whitclock also a charge engineer, lost a leg, which was amputated soon after the explosion. It is hoped that he will recover.
The explosion occurred in one of the new 20,000 K.W. turbines, which wag being run on trial for purposes of balancing. As the three engineers who were in charge of the test are killed, it can only be surmised what caused the accident. As far as is known the turbine was running at normal speed disconnected from its generator. It is thought that the speed must have abnormally increased and that the emergency trip valve, the function of which is automatically to shut off steam in the event of the turbine overspeeding, may have failed to act, which allowed the rotor to attain an abnormally high speed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.