Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 197, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1920 — SWIMS 600 FEET TO WARN TRAIN [ARTICLE]

SWIMS 600 FEET TO WARN TRAIN

Section Foreman Braves Raging Icy Waters to Save 150 Passengers, a SOUTH DAKOTA FLOOD HERO After Setting the Danger Signals Foreman Remembers His Negligee and Swims Back Across 600 Feet of Swirling Current. Omaha.—ln the recent South Dakota floods John Williams, a section foreman, swam a swollen creek at night in a hailstorm to warn a passenger train that a bridge had gone out. He stripped himself and tied the danger signals to his back. After he had set them he approached a near-by house, then remembered his negligee and swam back across the 600 feet of swirling current. The passenger train, It developed later, was stopped farther up the road at a point where the railroad men had little hope, of halting it. Williams’ heroism, however, was not overlooked by the railroad officials. The bridge was the Burlington’s* ■over Hat creek, near Ardmore, S. D. The Hat creek flood tied up traffic for

eight days and cost seven lives and did $500,000 damage to the one road. Several dajs after the flood the section foreman was looked up by a newspaper man from the dty. He found him directing a gang of laborers repairing the washout - Williams related how it had been raining through the previous week; and the April blizzard had left the ground soaked, so that when storm came on it ran off jas If from & duck's back "and old Hat creek started on a rampage.” Decided to Swim. *1 kept watching the new bridge over the creek all afternoon,” Williams told his visitor, “and the wateg kept cornin’ up and cornin’ up until ft reached the ties. Then I got worried "for fear that the bridge would go out, and I went back to town and reported it to the operator. He told the dis, patcher at Alliance about it. The telephone and telegraph wires rennin* west had all gone down and we couldn’t get Edgemont or anyone west of the creek. Jack Welch, the dispatcher at Alliance, talked to me over the railroad phone and asked me if 1 . could get to the west end of the bridge, across the creek, and put out a red light and some stop signals so as to hold the night passenger train, No. 82, which was due at nine o’clock. I told him I’d try, and went back to the bridge. ’

“When I got there again the water was clear over the-top of the bridge? and it looked to me like one of the steel spans had gone out. We tried to phone the government farm 90 the other side to ask them to go out and put out a red light, but their phone was gone and we-couldn’t reach anybody. “Well, I Just flggered the chance* was probably against me gtttin’ across, but It was only my life against ISO passengers-on No. 42, and I flggered that the train would be running pretty fast when they came up to the bridge, and they might be Into it before they saw It, so I walked up the creek a half-mile, stripped off my clothes, tiedmy red lantern, red flag and torpedoes to my back, and swam across. » Swam Back for Clothe*. “There wasn’t so many trees out there, and she was only about 600 feet wide, but the water was full of ballstones and'- cold as h—. It was rainin’ to beat the band and dark as I sure felt good when I hit that fence on the other side and drug myself on the bankr” “How- did yA get back to Ardmore r Williams was asked, after ha had related how he placed the signals. . - “Wen, I walked up to the government house, but when I got dose to the office and saw the bright light* I remembered I didn’t have no clothes on and I thought M make * pretty lookin’ sight bustin’ in on ’eo| like that, so I walked beck up thd and swum back.* •