Daily News from New York, New York • 526

DAILY NEWS, THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 1958 44 IFireboatt Barged! Dntto lerrible By ROBERT McCARTHY Twelve hours after the East River collision and explosion, Fire Capt. Eugene Kenny, 44, his face still black from smoke and his uniform fuel-stained, described the "terrible inferno" he encountered as skipper of the fireboat William J- Gaynor, first fireboat on the IMIli II I 1 .11 yy-j 1 fi-V. Si in SO or 40 seconds and on the scene in two minutes. The tanker was a mass of flame from stem to stern and the freighter's main deck, pilot house and lifeboats were afire. The flaming gas had sprayed over both ships and some men were hanging from lines on the sides of the Nebraska.

4,000 Gallons a Minute "The main body of the fire was on the bow of the freighter. We hit her with turret pipes throwing 4,000 gallons a minute. The crew ran ahead of the fire toward the rear of the vessel and we had to be careful not to send them overboard with those high-powered streams." The seagoing firefighter, who lives at 9102 Colonial Road, Brooklyn, with his wife, Ursula, and daughter, Constance, 11, told how he brought the Gaynor alongside the rear of the burning freighter. "We moved in on the starboard side of the fantail. The tanker was hung up on the freighter's bow and pouring flame.

The pipes kept the fire away from the crew and about 20 of them including two women were able to jump to the top of our pilot house. It was about an eight-foot drop from the freighter's deck. Many were badly burned -and two seamen had their clothes completely burned off. Took a Calculated Risk "I started to pull away when more men yelled from the fan-, tail. It was a calculated we had to move in closer.

The Nebraska's screws (propeller) were still turning and we were forced to pull tip near them to get to the men. About 10 more jumped aboard when the screws caught us amidships. "A gash was ripped in our side about eight feet below the water line and we began shipping water. Our pilot. Otto Winderl, 61, or- Hurt in Ship Collision, iFire; Coast Guard (Probing fj' rTT'-vV.

I eerie two minutes after the crash. "The tanker was a mass of flame and I felt no one could be alive in that inferno," he said. "As I brought the Gaynor in close, I cbuld see men on the Nebraska running along the burn-'Jng deck toward the fantail. The flames I were spreading quickly toward them and the men on the deck pipes aimed at the fire to keep it from reaching the rear of the freighter. That way we were able to effect the rescues." Emergency Signal "I was my office on the fireboat moored at the foot of Fulton Brooklyn, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge," he continued, "when about 12:20 A.

M. I heard four blasts from -a ship's whistle an emergency signal. I had just riven the order to cast off when heard the crash, then seconds later the explosion." "It was one -big well-vented Hast and it lit up tjie whole sky. "We were away from the berth. 2 Lost, 36 from page 3) river to make one rescue.

From the pier off Jefferson Patrol-rnan Eichard Gazzola, 31, of Clinton St. station, and 16-year-cld Candido Santiago, of 571 East River Drive, swam 200 feet to save two flouundering, teenage deckhands who were drifting toward a flaming patch of oil. On shore, a Bellevue Hospital disaster unit of doctors and nurses waited near Manhattan Bridge to give first aid to the smoke-smudged survivors and race them to four hospitals. For some two hours, firemen fought the fires on the river and on Manhattan Bridge, which had to be shut off to traffic and all Jay yesterday and last night guarded against the threat of new fires from the still-seeping gasoline. Probably today, the coast Guard will appoint a formal, three-officer board to ho1d hearings in the puzzling collision on clear night.

Full Gasoline Cargo Riding low with her full cargo gasoline, the Empress Bay, owned by the Tanker Petroleum 70 Pine was en route from the Esso Refinery in Bay-enne, N. to Mount Vernon. The Nebraska, a 438-foot dry argo freighter owned by the Fwedish Transatlantic Line, 34 Whitehall St, was coming downstream from New Haven toward an overnight anchorage at Staten Island. In the tanker, Capt. Anton JTagestad.

43. 6665 Colonial Kcad, Brooklyn, was in his bunk amidships. Second Mate Miljenko Kakich, of Fort Lee, N. had the watch. "I saw the lights of the freighter," Rakich said later.

"She blew her whistle at us. I signaled tack. But she didn't turn off and she was coming too fast. I couldn't turn off. There was a tug nearby and I didn't have any room.

I expected she would turn any minute. But she didn't" A Pilot Was Aboard Aboard the Nebraska was Capt. Frank Haughn, 55, one of the three pilots in the 160-year-old Jlell Gate Pilots Association. A veteran of 19 years, he had boarded her earlier off City Island for the run downriver. What happened next was ap- arently a mixup in signals.

Siting on Coast Guard Pier 9, Able Seaman Virgil Jackson, of Ross-ville, thought the tanker was crossing the river "in the direction of Brooklyn." Then he spotted a freighter coming downstream "pretty fast." "The freighter let out four blasts a warning of danger," he a Fireman Walter Kain inspects hole sustained while battling dered the boilers secured and we pulled away for the run to the nearest pier. We just made it in time. We had eight foot of water Bridge to Hell Gate. At :20 A.M., the Coast Guard banned smoking along the imperiled seven miles of river and directed that firehoses be manned on every pier. Traffic in the river was banned from the Battery to a mile north of Manhattan Bridge, Capt George W.

Holtzman, acting port commander, said the gasoline had reached as far as Hell Gate and en route flooded into the U. S. Naval Shipyard, Brooklyn, and under nearby piers. Shortly before 6 A. there was such a concentration1 at the Navy Yard that supplies of foam were brought ever from the Navy installation in Bayonne.

-Trains Rerouted The ban on river traffic finally was lifted at 7:50 A. but even in mid-morning Deputy Fire Chief Hugh Halligan, head of the Marine Division, warned that a "possible" gasoline danger still existed "over a 40 to EO-mile coastal area of the city." As a result, all excursion boats were ordered out of the East River, and CG vessels turned back the Day Line's beet, the Knickerbocker. Normal passenger, pleasure and commercial ship traffic was not resumed till 12:45 P.M. From 12:30 to 3 A. M-, the fire- menaced Manhattan Bridge was closed to all traffic, including BMT trains of the Sea Beach, West End and Brighton Lines.

Then the upper level was reopened exclusively for truck traffic. The lower level remained closed for repairs, which forced rerouting of BMT trains tc the Montague St tunnel. 'Shortly after 7 A. two lanes on the lower level were opened. Her bow so scorched that her original name Kanangoora showed through the taint, the Nebraska was brought to Fier 26 by four tugs.

But the Empress Bay, only 15 feet of her bow section exposed (KEWS foto by Jack Clarity) Nurse Rae Rogers attends Inga Hoegfeldt, radio operator of the Nebraska, in Columbus Hospital emergency room. (NEWS foto by Leonard Btrick) in portside of fireboat Gaynor, fire in ship collision. in the Gaynor when we tied tip to the dock' under the Manhattan Bridge near South St- Two wore and she would have sunk." 0 (NEWS foto by Dan FaxreU) Mats Laurin, 20, injured passenger aboard Nebraska. above water, was practically hulk. With each incoming tide, she shifted during the day and night, and gasoline slicks 150 yards long came out ofi her ruptured tanks.

No one could tell how much remained in the wreckage, but the Coast Guard was hopeful that with one or two more tide changes, most cf the gas would be dissipated. There were three women aboard the Nebraska. They were Inga Hoegfeldt, 27, the freighter's radio operator for the last four years; Mrs. Yvonne Rosland, SO, wife of First Engineer Axel Rosland, and Mrs. Ethel Wahtra, 88, wife of Second Engineer Martin Wahtra.

Mrs. Wahtra, burned on the face, hands and body, was taken to Columbus Hospital. Her condition last night was other women were shaken up. Fire Smokes Out 80 in Restaurant Fire erupted in a grease duct in the kitchen of the Carnegie Tavern, in the Carnegie Hall Building, 165 W. 56th at 8:15 P.

M. yesterday. The air conditioning 8 circulated the smoke into the restaurant, driving out 80 customers. Firemen quickly doused the blaze and the smoke was cleared away in about 30 minutes. Ike on Course Washington, June 25 (UPI).

President Eisenhower took advantage of warm sunny weather this afternoon to -nWv i SOfWWM. N. I. MISFIIIS. C0I.

UNION S1SMFSRS. COMM. I -fiftyr ir- I the 17-year-old apprentice, "but nothing seared me like this." Fire and CG authorities praised the Nebraska for keeping up steam thus preventing the flaming ship from drifting into a pier. But then, rapidly, disaster was almost compounded three more times. Cavanagh Is Grateful First, a third ship, a small barge, brushed against the sinking Empress Bay, but pulled away under her own power.

Then a fourth vessel also loaded with gasoline barely escaping collision "by her skipper's skillful piloting. "God was with us!" Fire Commissioner Cavanagh exclaimed later. "Had it struck, being fully loaded with gasoline, all the piers in the East River would have been involved." As it was, only the gasoline belching out of the stricken Empress Bay created the third fire hazard, reaching from Brooklyn said. "There was no response from the barge. Then it looked to me like the brightest flash bulb that ever went off." Only passenger aboard the Nebraska, 20 year old Mats Laurin, a freshman at the University of Upsala in Sweden, saw the tanker meeting his vessel on the starboard side.

The Nebraska's lookout, he said, yelled a warning by megaphone, and there were short steam-whistle blasts from the freighter. "The tanker cut starboard as if to cut across the path of our snip, he asserted. "I can imagine why the tanker made the turn." Then the freighter her bow especially strengthened for navigating through ice in Scandinavian waters knifed into the Empress Bay, and the two vessels locked in a position. Tanker Explodes Eurning gasoline showered over both craft, set the water afire and illuminated the city skyline. Pillars of flame shot upward to set the bridge ablaze and, for a time, witnesses said, from Brooklyn to Manhattan Bridges, almost shore to shore, the river appeared to be "a lake of flame" that was reflected from skyscraper windows in the Wall St.

area. With the tanker almost suspended across her bow, the Nebraska continued to move. Then the smaller craft dropped off, exploded and finally sank. Aboard 64-foot Coast Guard craft, Seaman Apprentice Edward Dick-enman, of Loudonville, N. had the shirt blown off his back.

"I've been in fires before," said On a Million-to-1 Shot But This Fire Was it The flaming collision between a freighter and a tanker in the East River was described by veteran tankermen yesterday as a "one in a million shot" To bolster the claim, they pointed out that about 200 tankers churn through the waters of New York Harbor daily. They com- parea tne tanKer activity with that of cabs in mid-Manhattan. Last year, according to the Army's engineers, 177,200,000 short tons of petroleum products passed through the harbor here without mishap. The Coast Guard takes elaborate precautions to prevent collisions with the barges, which carry everything in fuel from oil to high octane airplane gasoline. WODOSBIOSt.