Joseph Dudley Fisher, 24, laborer, sustained fatal injuries attempting to save Joseph C. Easterwood, 32, labor foreman, from suffocation, Oil Center, New Mexico, April 18, 1937. Easterwood was overcome by gas in an oil-tank, which he had entered in the course of his work. The tank was 18 feet in diameter and 16 and 1/2 feet high, and a manhole in the top was two feet in diameter. The tank had been drained of crude oil. Fisher from the top of the tank shouted to another man that Easterwood had been overcome, and then he entered the manhole and began to descend a ladder. A few seconds later the man heard him fall. Twenty minutes later an opening was made in the side of the tank, and Fisher and Easterwood were removed. Easterwood could not be revived. Fisher was revived, but he had suffered a fracture of a cervical vertebra, and he died a week later.
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