The Kingsland explosion was an incident that took place during World War I at a munitions factory in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, United States, on January 11, 1917.

The Canadian Car and Foundry Company, based in Montreal, had signed large contracts with Russia and Britain for delivery of ammunition.

On January 11, 1917, a fire started in Building 30 of the Canadian Car and Foundry Company at Kingsland in Bergen County, New Jersey.

The cleaning process included several steps: Rumor had it that a group of saboteurs operated under the direction of Frederick Hinsch.

Wozniak, who admitted that he had served time as a draftee in the Austrian Army, was told by Mr. Cahan that he would be needed in New York as part of the investigation into the fire.

Wozniak, who lived at the Russian Immigrant House on Third Street in New York City, eluded the detectives who were watching him and disappeared.

Fleeing workers were able to cross the frozen Hackensack River or run up Valley Brook Avenue to safety.

Frantic with terror, they paid no attention to the wire, which cut some of them cruelly, but went ploughing, the whole terror-struck crowd, through the mud and thin ice of the marsh.

It is said that a building in which the loaded shells were stored was the first to go.” “The terrific blast spread the panic, which had hitherto been confined to the factory yard, to Kingsland and the adjoining village of Lyndhurst.

Shells that had been intended for the armies of the Czar burst in terrific salvos over the roofs of the houses, shattered chimneys, riddled the car repair barns of the Lackawanna Railway, and set two dwellings on fire.”[4] Two miles of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad tracks were torn up by the explosions.

Commuters from New York City were delayed by up to four hours and at one point 40,000 were jammed into the Hoboken station in a "clamoring, close-packed mass."

When the fire and ensuing explosions started, the residents of Snake Hill began to panic, fearing the world was coming to an end.

As the 900+ inmates of the asylum grew more panicked, the superintendent, Dr. George W. King, and Dr. James Meehan, chairman of the Hospital committee figured a way to calm the residents.

The inmates were assembled in the lecture hall and they were told that the European War had ended and the explosions were detonations of big guns to celebrate the event.