Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1889 — IN A RAGING FLOOD. [ARTICLE]

IN A RAGING FLOOD.

A Reservoir in Rhode Island Bursts with Fearful Results. A Providence (R. I.) dispatch says: The Spring Lake reservoir near Fiskville, in the southwest corner of Cranston, about fifteen miles from this city, which supplies a number of mill villages along the Pawtnxet river, burst. Three persons were drowned and some damage done to property. A man named Yeaw, who was about a quarter of a mile off, noticed the water coming through the masonry of the dam, as he describes it, in a stream about as big as a barrel. The hole was apparently growing very rapidly. The only living object in sight was a cow a few hundred feet across the field, which Yeaw succeeded in rescuing. Meanwhile down the valley were Mrs. Greene Tew, aged sixty; a Mrs. Hawkins, aged ninety, and Mrs. Tew’s son, seven years old. They were walking through a strip of wood and were overtaken by the flood and drowned. Their bodies were found in the wood, through which the water quickly ran until it emptied into the Pawtuxet river. Earl Dodge, nine years old, was with the party that was overtaken and drowned. He escaped with bruises by clinging to a tree. The river rose rapidly and caused considerable uneasiness among people along its banks, who thought that the Ponegansett reservoir, the biggest in the State, had gone. Many of them left their homes and fled, but the flood subsided as rapidly as it had come. The path of the water from the reservoir was through a thinly settled country, and . the only damage done to property was the wrecking of a stable belonging to Russell Matthewson, the capsizing of Dr. E. Clarke’s carriage shop, and the demolition of three road bridges. The dam was built in 1887 for the service of the Pawtuxet Valley company, redeeming a small swamping pound locacally known aa Spruce Lake. The reservoir covered eighteen acres and contained about thirtythree million gallons of water. The dam is 925 feet long, 17 feet 9 inches high, and 8 feet on top and 35 feet wide at the bottom. The gap left by the water is between sixty and seventy feet long. It is just above the waste pipe. Yeaw is the only witness to any part of the casualty. The reservoir was practically emptied. The cause of the bursting of the dam is believed to be a spring that existed under the middle of the dam, which undermined it