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The most disastrous fire that has ever occurred in this county, on Monday night, destroyed the greater portion of the National Glass company's main plant at Rochester, involved a loss of upwards of a million dollars and throwing about eight hundred employees out of work. The remaining portion of the works not damaged by the fire, known as the Punch factory or the upper works, employed about seven hundred men.
Even if there had been any hope that the fire might be gotten under control, it was destroyed when a shifting engine, in an attempt to pull a car of timber from the warehouse, cut two sections of the hose in two. There are those who think the flames might have been stayed had the hose not been cut, and one of the company's officials Tuesday morning expressed himself in very emphatic terms concerning the action of the engineer in running his engine in on the switch at such an inopportune moment.
Notwithstanding the fact that everyone realized the awful calamity that had befallen Rochester in the loss of this magnificent works, there were few of the spectators that were not impressed with the weird and spectacular scene that greeted their eyes when the entire plant had become a seething mass of flames.