Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1898 — LOSS IN THE MILLIONS [ARTICLE]

LOSS IN THE MILLIONS

ENORMOUS DAMAGE DONE BY RAGING FLOODS. Indiana and Ohio the Chief Sufferers by Inundations Which in Some Sections Have Beached an Unprecedented Height—Traffic Suspended. People Driven from Home. Flood damage reaching into the millions of doHars is reported throughout Indiana and Ohio. Thousands of families are homeless and many of them are dependent upon charity. Many cities report that the water is at the highest stage ever known. Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania and West Virginia also report rivers turned into raging torrents, but in those States the damage thus far done is comparatively insignificant. ' ' Two railroad wrecks have resulted from washouts. One was in Ohio, where a Baltimore and Ohio passenger train went through a bridge near Frazeysburg. The other and the more serious one was near Columbus, Ind., where a wrecking train met disaster. Property loss in Indiana will exceed $1,000,000. AH the streams are overflowing their banks, houses and railroad tracks have been washed away, and growing crops have been seriously damaged. Near Greensburg, the loss of two lives is reported. Franklin has 200 homeless families to care for, while Shelbyville has 300 and Kushville 150. These are simply sample figures from entire hoosierdom. Throughout central and southern Ohio all the railroads are either crippled or totally disabled. The damage in the State may amount to $1,500,000. Dayton reports the conditions worse than at any period since 1860, when the central part of that populous city was inundated. Delaware has four business blocks under water and a much wider territory threatened. Canal Dover is cut off from the outside world, and unless the waters soon subside many lives will be placed in jeopardy. The list of homeless In Zanesville foots up to 4,000. In Columbus 2,000 persons are imprisoned in the upper stories of dwellings ill the western part of the city. An Idea, of the flood conditions in various sections can be gleaned from condensed press dispatches given below: Indiana. The White river is still rising. The Richmond electric light plant is drowned out. The canal north of Warsaw overflowed, flooding the entire vicinity.' Between 100 and 150 Kushville families have been driven from their homes. At St. Paul, the Bickhart flour mills have been washed out and destroyed. The property loss in Decatur County is about SIOO,OOO, and two lives have been lost in the flood. . Several bridges on the Big Four and Cambridge railroads are out, as well as ten miles of roadbed. The loss to the farming community around Shelbyville is estimated at from SIOO,OOO to $200,000. Many important towns are temporarily cut off and trains have been entirely abandoned on some roads. The northeastern section of Indianapolis is submerged, and many people have been driven from their homes or forced to the second stories. Between thirty and forty miles of (track of the Louisville division of the PanHandle are washed away between Louisville and Indianapolis. Ohio. Hundreds are homeless at Newark. At Cincinnati the Ohio will probably reach fifty-five feet. Floods have caused a shutdown of nearly every factory in Hamilton. H. C. Ross was killed as a bridge collapsed in Muskingum County. Four thousand Zanesville people have been driven from their homes, and few of them saved any household effects. Four squares of Delaware business houses are under water, and scores of wagon and foot bridges have been carried away. Nearly all railroads in central and southern Ohio are either crippled or totally disabled because of washouts or destroyed bridges. The Tuscarawas river has broken loose in one of the biggest floods ever known, and Canal Dover is entirely cut off from the outside world. A bridge over the Wukatomika creek at Frazeysburg gave way while a Baltimore and Ohio passenger train was crossing, and the whole train was submerged. Passengers crawled to the tops of the cars and were soon taken away by farmers in skiffs. No one was seriously injured.

MANY ARE KILLED. Train Plunges Through a Washed-Out Trestle in Indiana. Shortly before G o’clock Wednesday evening a work train loaded with officials and workmen plunged through a trestle one mile south of Columbus, Ind., on the Louisville division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Several were killed. The men had been at work repairing the track, which had been washed out in many places by the high waters, and were on their way to the southern part of the road; The work train had passed over the railroad bridge just south of Columbus and the engineer opened the throttle. lie thought the danger was past. Following the engine was a combination coach, with seats in each end, the middle for baggage. Behind this was a caboose. The men were all in the coach. Just a mile from the railroad bridge was a frame trestle, which had been weakened by the high water. Upon this structure the train plunged, and almost instantly disappeared Then begun a struggle for life. The window panes were broken and the men escaped with broken limbs anil bruised bodies. The engineer crawled to the®top of his boiler and lay there until rescued, with both legs broken. The fireman caught in a tree iu the river. The accident was witnessed by n throng of sightseers. The work of rescue was conducted under the greatest difficulty. Just a few minutes before the wreck occurred a train load of Madison teachers on their way to the Southern Teachers’ Association at Terre Haute passed along. The North German Garotte has published an official denial of the story that Emperor William, at a private dinner party last week, declared that so long as he is the German emperor “the United States shall not possess themselves of Cuba.” Prince Bismarck is a helpless cripple, and his only diversion is beiug wheeled around his garden in an invalid’s chair.