People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1893 — DEATH IN THE FLOOD. [ARTICLE]

DEATH IN THE FLOOD.

Floods Devastate a Small Hungarian Town—The Inhabitants Perish in the Kiver Danube While Trying to Escape from a Schoolhouse and Church —Number of Dead Not Known, Though Large. Vienna, March I.—A terrible calamity has overtaken the village of Gergely, near the town of Paks, in Hungary, situated on the river Danube, about 60 miles south of Buda. Owing to a sudden rise of the Danube the 1,600 inhabitants of Gergely found the mud huts in which they lived surrounded by water. The people took refuge in the church and school, which were constructed of stronger materials, hoping that these buildings would be able to hold out against the flood. Mothers and children elung to the altar, beseeching the intercession of the saints. They saw their homes disappearing in the. raging stream and the swelling waters began to beat against the church and school building with such strength that at last they decided that to remain would mean the destruction of all of them, while if they fled some at least might escape. Opening the doors they started out into the flood, which surged nearly to the waists of the grown people. Fathers and mothers carried their children, and the sick and feeble were helped along by those who were stronger. They fled as fast as thtey could it} the direction of Paks. One mother with five children sank in the waters and perished. Many others, the number of whom is as yet unknown, were drowned in the flood and the survivors reached Paks in a most deplorable condition. The people of Paks gave the fugitives all the help possible, althbugh deeply concerned for their own safety, as the Danube' is 20 feet above normal. There is no doubt that the number’of dead is very large. tp