Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1896 — SEATH TO SEVENTEEN. [ARTICLE]

SEATH TO SEVENTEEN.

Awful Havoc Wrought by the Starm in Pennsylvania. One of the most terrible results of the Pennsylvania storm Monday night was the drowning of a number of coal miners in the Painter’s Hun district, just over the Washington County line. The boarding house which they occupied was blown down and swept away, and of the sixteen miners skreping in it fifteen are believed to have been drowned. They were all foreigners, mostly Italians, and were employed in the mines of Col. W. P. Rend and the Ridgeway-Bishop Coal Company. The boarding house was a little mining settlement called Cecil, on the line of the eight-mile branch of the Panhandle road, which leaves the Chartiers division at Bridgeville. The bianefi runs over to McDonald and Cecil is located midway between the two points. The fatality occurred at 4 o'clock in the morning, when the small stream. Painter's Run, which empties into Chartiers creek, was suddenly swollen into a raging torrent by a cloudburst. The stream had been very high on account of the rain, but little damage had been done before the rush of water which carried away the tenement house. A great deal of mining and oil property was damaged in the district along the run. The water rose some places to a depth of eighteen feet. The loss in the district will amount to thousands of dollars. Many narrow escapes are reported from the valley through which Painter's Run courses, and it is not unlikely that some others have perished. Several houses in the valley were swept away. The full extent of the damage wrought by the hurricane in Pittsburg and vicinity Monday night was not known until daylight, when wreck and ruin were apparent on all sides. Steeples were blown from churches and adjoining buildings crushed, houses were unroofed, trees broken off and in some eases torn up by the roots, while the havoc caused by the heavy rainfall of last week was repeated. Summed up, with many outlying districts to hear from, the result in Pittsburg was two lives lost, thirty-six persons injured, many, it is feared, fatally, and property damaged to the amotwit of SIOO,OOO.