Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1896 — DEATH `TO SEVENTEEN. [ARTICLE]

DEATH `TO SEVENTEEN.

Awful Havoc Wrought by the Storm in Pennsylvania. One of the most terrible results of tha Pennsylvania storm Monday night was the drowning of a number of coabminers in the Painter’s Run district, just over the Washington County lihe. Thg boarding house 'ivhich they occupied was blown down and swept away, and of the sixteen miners sleeping in it fifteen are believed to have been drowned. They were all foreigners, mostly Italians, and were einployed in the mines of (Joi. W. P. Rend and the Ridgeway-Bishop Coal Company. The boarding house was a little mining settlement called Cecil, on the line of the eight-mile branch of the Panhandle road, which leaves the Chartiers division ,at Bridgeville. The branch runy over to McDonald and Cecil is located midway between the two points.. The fatality occurred at 4 o'clock in the>morning, when thd small stream. Painter’s Run, which empties into-Chartiers creek, was suddenly swollen into a raging torrent by a cloud,burst. The stream had been very high on account rain, blit little -damage had been done before the rush of water which carried away'the tenement house. A great deal of mining and oil property was damaged in the district along the run. The .water rose some places to a depth of eighteen feet. The loss in.the district will amount to 1 thousands of dollars. Many narrow escapes are reported fr6m the valley through which Painter’s Run courses, and it is not unlikely that some others have perished. Several houses in the valleywere swept away. - The full extent of‘the damage wrought by the hurricane in Pittsburg’and vicinity Monday night was not known unti| daylight, when wreck irnd ruin were apparent on all sides. Steeples were blown from churches and adjoining buildings crushed, houses were unroofed, trees broken off and in some cases torn up by the roots, while the havoc caused by the heavy rainfall of last week was repeated. Summed up. w’itb many outlying districts to hear from, the result in Pittsburg was two lives lost, thirty-six persons injured, many, it is feared., fatally, and property damaged to the am,punt of $100,009.