Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1896 — RUIN IN ITS WAKE. [ARTICLE]

RUIN IN ITS WAKE.

ATLANTIC COAST SWEPT BY WIND AND RAIN. Railing Elements Nearly Wipe Oni Many Villa gee— Eleven Bridge Repairers Die Near Bristol, Conn.— Peril in the Barsting of a Dam. Fire Adds to Horrors. Cyclonic winds and drenching rain swept the entire North Atlantic coast Thursday. Ruin and death w r ere left in the wake of the storm. Frequently a velocity of seventy-five miles an hour was reached by the wind. Shipping suffered severely, though the warnings to sailing masters, given in ample time, kept nearly all the vessels in port. To the horrors of cyclone and flood that of tiro was added at the village of Bound Brook, N. J., which was almost wiped out. It is said that fully forty houses were destroyed by fire. Many of them, as they blazed, were swept from their foundations into the rushing waters of the flftod, communicating the conflagration to others, and in this way the fire spread more rapidly than it otherwise would. The dam at Pocahontas Lake, N. J., broke and all the lower part of the city was inundated. All day the melting snow swelled the streams and poured into the lake, which is a mile and a half long by three-fourths of a mile wide. It was cov* ered by eight inches of ice, and the whole was held in cheek by the frailest and flimsiest of wooden dams. The water rose to the top. Meanwhile the water rushing through the flume and from all the sewers had filled the Whippany river, which flows through Morristown, to the brim, and the water ran over. Crowds of people flocked down to view the spreading waters. Suddenly with a groat crash a section of the dam eighteen feet wide went down and a wall of water six feet high swept into the valley, quickly followed by thousands of tons of ice. In ten minutes the water rose ten feet in the streams. The embankment of the Delaware and Lackawanna Railroad runs, through the town. The Whippany river flows under this embankment through a sixteen-foot culvert. The immense volume of water rushed against the embankment and, not being able to escape, backed up through the town, rising in the houses and flooding all the first floors. People fled in terror to the second stories. Many heroic rescues were made. Barns were carried away and a large number of horses and cows wero drowned. A large part of the Whippany Railroad was washed away. Thousands of tons of ice in large cakes were carried down the stream, and these did most of the damage to buildings, carrying them away. Nearly the whole State of New Jersey is under water. From all sections came reports of impeded traffic, damaged houses and barns and washed out railways. Along the Delaware river the damage was extensive, the water rising within a few hours to the point marked ns dangerous. Three culverts and a half mile of track were washed away at Mahunkachunk, where the Pennsylvania and Lackawanna Railroads meet. The Lehigh and Hudson River Railroad was washed out and all passenger aud freight traffic stopped. The railroads’ losses will be many thousands of dollars. Death in Icy Waters. Eleven of a gang of forty bridge repairers, working on the railroad span over the Pequobuck river, a mile east of Bristol, Conn., met a terrible death by drowning at 9 o’clock Thursday night, when the structure collapsed because of the flood. The old New Haven bridge was to have been replaced by a stone structure. Trains have had orders to run slow over it since work was commenced, aud in the afternoon it sagged dangerously, when the 4 o’clock train passed over it. A work train with forty bridge repairers was sent to repair it, and while engaged in this work the structure collapsed, precipitating the workmen into the icy water below. The unfortunate men in the water attempted to seize sticks and. portions of the abutments which had broken loose, but. they were carried down stream and were quickly lost to sight in the darkness. Elevcb were drowned.