Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1917 — SLEET STORM CAUSES HEAVY DAMAGE [ARTICLE]

SLEET STORM CAUSES HEAVY DAMAGE

Local Telephone Company Suffers Heavily From Destruction to Lines—Other Places Suffer.

Few people realized the severity of the sleet storm of last night and this morning and Jbe reports coming in from various points in the county in-' dicate that a great jdeal of damage has been done and that considerable property loss will be recorded. It is said that the hiirii'juice wires of the Remington telephone company * were burnt entirely out and that the town is without communication with the outside world. There are no telegraph wires in working order south of Monon and the trains are experiencing considerable, difficulty. There is. no word from the south into this city. The local telephone company, of which W. L. Bott is owner*, has suffered greatly from damage to their lines and. poles.- Practically every pole for a distance of five miles north of town to Burk’s bridge, are either down or broken- In some instances the poles were entirely out of the ground. Practically all of these poles were new ones and the loss will be considerable. The line in’this direction was put in the best possible, shape a short time ago and the loss and repair will amount to several hundreds of dollars. The telephone crew was on the job immediately .and the work of putting the line's in shape again was soon in progress. The management hopes soon to have all these country lines in working order.