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Sunday, November 26, 2023

A.L. Chesson, 64, Injured When New Boiler Tube Blew at Chesson Saw Mill, Nov. 26, 1923

A.L. Chesson Injured in Explosion at Mill. . . Explosion Comes Near to Wrecking New Boiler Room and Brick Casing Surrounding the Boiler at Plant of Chesson Manufacturing Co. Early Monday

A.L. Chesson, 64 years of age, father of Roy Chesson, owner of the Chesson Manufacturing Company, is in the hospital as a result of injuries which he received when a tube blew out of the boiler of the saw mill at about eight minutes after 7 o’clock Monday morning.

When this newspaper went to press Mr. Chesson was resting quietly and it is not believed that he is seriously injured. There is an ugly scalp wound on the right of the top of his head and a contusion above one eye on the forehead, and a number of bodily bruises, but no serious consequences are expected as a result of any visible injury, and there is no indication of internal injuries.

Mr. Chesson was standing between a tramroad in front of the boiler room and the Norfolk Southern railroad track when he was struck, a distance of 50 deet from the boiler room. A negro, Percy Taylor, working beside him was not injured and four men in the boiler room at the time of the explosion received only a few scratches. Those in the boiler room were T.N. White, fireman, and his young son, Elgin White, Wardell Nooney, mill foreman, and Walter Wright, sawyer. Mr. White has a cut finger, and there are some skinned shins resulting from the scramble to get out of the boiler room, but no one received injuries of consequence sufficient to put them in bed except A.L. Chesson.

The blowing out of a boiler tube is a matter of no unusual significance in a plant operated by steam, but on this occasion the explosion came very near to completely wrecking the new boiler room and brick casing surround the boiler at the plant of the Chesson Manufacturing Company, which only resumed operations on Monday, November 19, following the $15,000 fire which on Tuesday night, September 18, practically wiped out the plant’s saw mill.

One would think, to look at the boiler room now, that a bomb had been dropped through the roof and had exploded just above the firebox. There is a gaping hole in the roof, half the front of the building is blown off, and in the rear the brick casing of the boiler is blown out and a hole torn through the wall of the building big enough for the boiler and casing to pass through. Brick from the casing were hurled all the way across Knobbs Creek, a distance of about 75 yards.

The execution was done in front of the boiler, for through the front crashing through the iron door of the boiler and splintering it, came the offending tube of the boiler. It struck the front wall of the boiler room, tore half of it away bodily and hurled the wall through the air almost to the Norfolk Southern railroad track. The railroad track in front of the boiler room and fully 100 feet away, was thickly strewn with he sawdust that, used a fuel, was on the floor of the boiler room at the time of the explosion. Some of the debris from the building was found in the swamp on the other side of the Foreman-Blades road to their saw-mill, a distance of more than 100 yards from the scene of the explosion.

Mr. Chesson, fortunately, was not in direct line to be truck by the main mass of the hurtling timber with the boiler tube behind it. He is believed to have been hit by some of the shattered pieces of timber that were in the air as thick as shrapnel in a bombardment. He was not knocked own by the force of the impact of any blow that he received, but was seen staggering when the air first cleared. He sank to the ground before assistance could reach him, but was still conscious when picked up.

The cause of the explosion is unknown. The boiler was tested and stood under 175 pounds cold water pressure before operations were resumed. A pressure of 150 pounds was indicated by the steam gauge one day last week. The gauge at the time of the explosion registered a pressure of between 90 and 100 pounds.

Fireman T.N. White tells a coherent story of what actually happened.

“I came down to work about 5 o’clock,” he says, “bringing my son, Elgin, down to lay some flooring. We worked together until the night watchman, who was firing when I came down, knocked off at 6 o’clock. I then turned my attention to the boiler, leaving the boy to complete the flooring job alone.

“At 6:45 the gauge indicated a steam pressure of 60 pounds, and I closed the damper and cut off the draft. The first indication I had that anything was wrong came then when I noticed that the water gauge, which should have shown a rise of about an inch while we were getting up steam had risen about four or five inches. I went back and blew out the water, but the water gauge did not respond. I then blew the water out of the gauge and then out of the column. The water, however, immediately rose to the old level and the glass water gauge cracked. I called for help and ran for the wrench to cut the water off from the gauge. Mr. Nooney, the foreman, and Mr. Wright, the sawyer, came in and we had just succeeded in cutting the water off from the gauge when it burst. The tube blew out almost immediately.”

Mr. Chesson, the injured man, had two pocket knives in his pocket when he was struck and both of them were found on the ground near where he fell. An odd incident was that his eyeglasses were also picked up off the ground, neither lens broken, and the frames nowhere bent or twisted or showing in any way any sign of the accident.

Though the Chesson saw mill resumed operations last week, the carpenter work connected with rebuilding the plant had not been completed and Mr. Chesson was there winding up this work with Percy Taylor, colored, helper, when the explosion occurred.

Mr. Nooney, mill foreman, was on a ladder on top of the boiler with a wrench where he had been working to cut off the water from the glass gauge, when the explosion occurred. None of the men were injured by the explosion as they were all to one side of the boiler and the blowout came at each end.

“I found out how fast I can get down a ladder,” Mr. Nooney said later in the morning to a reporter for this newspaper, with a grim smile.

From The Daily Advance, Elizabeth City, N.C., Monday, November 26, 1923

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