Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1901 — HUNDREDS DIE IN FLOOD [ARTICLE]

HUNDREDS DIE IN FLOOD

A Dozen Busy Towns Swept Away. PEOPLE TRAPPED LIKE RATS. PocahontiM Coal Fields, In Wee* Virginia, Swept by a Cloudburst. Spreading Death and Devastation—Scores of Bodies Seen —Ball ways Bullied. A cloudburst In the Pocahontas coal fields In West Virginia destroyed hundreds of lives and millions of dollars of property Sunday. The wall of water swept through a narrow mountain valley already flooded by thirtythree hours of continuous, heavy rains. Two ridges of the Allegheny Mountains hemmed it in and helped it to gather force. It swept a dozen busy towns. It destroyed many miles of railroad tracks and telegraph lines. It tore from the hillsides the outer building of hundreds of coal mines, and it carried locomotives and trains of cars down the valley. The cataclysm crushed and drowned the inhabitants by hundreds as they struggled to escape up the mountain sides. The loss of life-is estimated at 400. The loss to railroad and mining property is at least $2,000,000 and the loss to other property probably as much more. These figures are, however, merely approximations, for communication with many of the villages is yet impossible. The flood may prove to have been a more disastrous one to life than the Johnstown horror, and the list of the dead may mount into thousands, or it may be that there was sufficient warning to permit the escape of the great majority of the people. Reports from many places indicate, however, that hundreds of bodies are floating down with the flood. The difficulty of getting relief to the district for perhaps a week or ten days until the railway lines are replaced means that there will probably be great suffering among people who were fortunate enough to save the.r lives, as all their stores were swept away. Fifteen hundred men are already at work trying to restore the tracks.

The scene of the worst part of the flood was the Valley of the Elkhorn, in McDowell county, in the southwestern part of West Virginia. Another valley to the south of this one along the Clinch river also suffered, but not so severely. Elkhorn creek flows between two mountain ridges, Indian Ridge to the north and Big Stone Ridge to the south. In some places the valley is not over a quarter of a mile wide, the hills rising precipitously from the banks of the stream, along which ran the track of the Norfolk and Western railroad. Over the high valley when the atmosphere was heated to a high degree the winds brought clouds saturated with moisture. The fall of rain that resulted was tremendous. The swollen mountain streams all poured their water into the Elkhorn and the narrow valley was filled by it. Then came the cloudburst. Its wall of water started down the valley shortly before 9 o’clock in the morning, and the damage had all been done by 11. There was nothing in its path that could resist it Houses were whirled away like sticks, railway embankments melted like snow In the sunlight. There was just a few minutes given the people to save themselves on the hills, and then all was over for those who had failed. The region of

the worst destruction stretches from (Welch, the county seat, on the west to Coaldal on the east, a distance of? about twenty miles. Of the towns between, Keystone, a place of 2,000 inhabitants, is reported to have suffered the most. , The death list there is reported to mount up toward 200. Sixty-six dead bodies have been recovered. There were thirty-five saloons in that town, and of them only one is left standing, it being located high on the hillside.' The rumor is that it is the only building in the town still standing. Vivian, the next largest town, is reported to have been almost wiped out of existence. In both of these towns the miners had assembled with their Saturday night’s pay. They cannot have got back to their mountain huts, and ■must have shared the fate of the inhabitants. After the flood the railroad company started men on foot, to walk along the hillsides to survey the condition of the line. A trainmaster, who walked the twelve miles between Vivian and North Fork, counted thir-ty-eight dead bodies floating on the surface. That is an indication of what may be expected when full information is obtained.