Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1902 — RAIN AND MELTING SNOW. [ARTICLE]

RAIN AND MELTING SNOW.

Floods Raging in All Parts of America Bo Great Damage. Hardly a section of the country escaped damage by flood last week. From Texas to the Northwest and from New York to Chattanooga wires'were down, railroads flooded, bridges wrecked and Ice gorges were threatening desolation to villages in Pennsylvania antfc upper New York. The gale in Ohio devastated miles of country, unroofed houses in Cleveland, carried away tops of church spires, upturned wooden houses and left a wide path of ruin, In the Cumberland Valley waterspouts are reported to have done great damage, but, with wires down, nothing can be told as to the loss.of life. The ice gorges in the Allegheny river had caused no loss of life, as far as reported, but wrecked much property. The Atlantic and gulf coasts are strewn with wrecks. The wind in some localities in the Middle West blew eighty miles an hour. On the coast it attained a velocity of a mile a minute. Two men were lost from the schooner Mattie and Lena trying to make a landing-on Block Island. A big steamer, the Yeoman, bound for Galveston to Liverpool, is ashore at Capo Henry, and there are other wrecks further south.

The Southern States report disasters everywhere. A passenger train wreck near Griffin, Ga„ due to the storm, killed four people. The Seaboard line bridge across the Oconee river is wrecked. There are floods all through that section, and the city of Athens is deprived of its water supply in the midst of great inundations. The Oak Mountain tunnel, thirty miles below Columbus, has caved at both ends.

Some of the rivers in Alabama have risen twenty-two feet iu twenty-four hours, a record that is almost unequalled by the rise of the Tennessee river, which is upTtwenty-one and a half feet, and by the last report was still rising at the rate of a foot an hour. A train was w’recked by a washout on th& Norfolk and Southwestern iu Virginia, and railroad bridges are dotvn on this road at Elizabethtown and in several other places. At Tallahassee, Fla., the new wing of the State Capitol is laid open, the entire south wall having been leveled by the storm. cyclone passed over Dawson, Ga., killing several people, and for several miles near Jackson the railroad tracks are under five feet of water. Pennsylvania has experienced almost every sort of damage possible from stress of weather. ~ *

The damage done by tlie recent rains in Wisconsin will amount to millions, it is estimated. In the district contiguous to West Superior alone the damage is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $10,000,000. The loss to the great lumber interests in other parts of Wisconsin and upper Michigan will be large in proportion.