Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1888 — NEW YORK SNOWED UP. [ARTICLE]

NEW YORK SNOWED UP.

Trattic Almost Aitogethrr M oppnt and T, lAgraphic Communication Hnut Off. New York, March 12—A furious storm of wind, accompanied successively by ra : n, snow, hail and sleet, broke over the Atlantic coast, in this section, early last evening. It is safe to say no such destructive storm to the telegraph wires has been experienced in many years. Notasiagle wire can be used to Philadelphia, eighty-eight miles, and the telegraph facilities bet weep, that c>ty and New York are probably ucequaledin any similar distance in any other country in the world. The hardest snow storm of the year by far is raging in New York City. It began early this morniDg, and at 9 o’clock there was a foot or over on the ground. The high wind caused drifts, which in the upper part of the city were three or four feet high. Traffic was almost suspended. Thousands of passengers were blocked on tbe elevated roads. Horse cars were entirely unable to move. People who left up town by elevated roads were unable to get further than Eighty-sixth street by the road.

At 7:10 this morning two trains on Third avenue Elevated Road collided at Seventy-sixth-street Station. One train was at the station unloading and taking on passengers, with which it was already overloaded. Owing to the snow on the track the train was unable to start. After it had been standing about twenty minutes, to the honor of all, a traiu came rushing down the incline from Seventy-fourth street, and dashed into the rear c ir.. The scene that followed was indescribable. The engine reared upon the end of the last car, and the steam escaped in great volumes, but fortunately rushed upward, thus saving the hemmed-in crowd on the forward train, as well as those on that end of the platform. The engineer of the rear train was killed and a number of passengers were injured. Postmaster Pearson said he had not seen such a blockade for a number of years. ATlThe telegfaph andtelephone wires in the city are in bad working order. Hundreds of wires are down, having been broken by the weight of the ice and snow. Tae ferry-boats of New York and Brooklyn and Jersey City are running once an hour or ies3. The wind at 10 a. m. attained a veloc'ty of sixty three miles an hour. It was so fierce up town that people on the elevated trains were fearful lest the trains should be blown from the track,

At midnight the storm was unabated. The wind was as furious as ever, but the snow had stopped falling. The snow drifts in the business streets are as deep as in the country districts. Grown persons here never saw the like. But meagre reports ha7e been received from uptown districts, but in the lower portions, where reporters managed to struggle through the Bnow and against the wmd, more than one hundred fractures of limbs and contusions of the skull were reported. The ambulance horses at the different hospitals were completely worn out early in the night, and calls in many cases could not tee responded to. 7 p m —T he storm is increasing and is absolutely unprecedented. All business ha 3 been paralyzed, At the Stock Exchange less than fifteen thousand shares were ecld, the smallest on record. Xheproduc9 markets were all nomioa’. The weather stopped the courts, jurors and witnesses iD murder cases being

unable to arrive. Every car in New York, Brooklyn and Jersey C.ly, and the elevated trains are stopped. The Brooklyn bridge and the ferries are almost abandoned, and the down-town hotels crammed withsubuibanites. The elevated roads run three thousand trains daily usually, and never before were Btopped. Westerners declare that Dakota never furnished the equal of New York’s blizzard to-day. Of forty mails due between 4 a. m. and noon, only two badarrived"by2 thhrafternocm; 9 p. m.—There is no abatement in the storm. The thermometer has fallen to 4°, and frozen ears and feet were never. so numerous. The drag stores have been filled with patients all day and evening. A woman absolutely froze to death, to-night, at t,he coiner of Broadway and Fulton street, popularly supposed to be the busiest four corners on earth. In the streets hundreds of loaded wagons have been apandoned and the horses taken to the nearest stables. There have been countless accidents from slipping. The Astor House alone turned away 300 would-be guests, and he other hotels have similar experience. At 1 a. m., on the 13th, the wind had slightly moderated. Every commercial and public electric light in the city was ordered shut off early in the night, for fear the wires would break and damage be done to pedestrians. Traffic on the elevated roads was not resumed till late at night, and then the trains ran only at irregular and long intervals.