Youth Dies After Halted Operation - Fire Rages in Hospital

Francis Marion Berg of Mt. Erie, Illinois, 24-year old student at Southern Illinois Normal College in Carbondale, died Sunday, March 10, 1940 in a Murphysboro hospital, where he was taken last Monday after an operation which had to be halted because of a fire.

While Berg was undergoing an operation for appendicitis at the Holden Hospital, Carbondale, fire broke out in the building, raging through the third floor and reached the operating room, halting the operation. Forced from the operating room, Dr. E.R. Carman and his assistants clamped Berg’s incision and removed him in an ambulance, 7 miles away to Murphysboro for completion of the operation.

About 9:30 a.m. firemen of Carbondale and Murphysboro fought flames which originated at the top of an elevator shaft next to the operating room on the third floor of the three story building. Firemen of the two cities brought it under control an hour later, containing the fire to the third floor.

There were 36 other patients in the hospital at the time.

Berg was born in 1914 son of David D. and Mabel (Vandeveer) Berg.

Burial in Scott Cemetery, Mt. Erie, Illinois.                                                       

Published in Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield, IL) – March 11, 1940