The Arizona sentinel., 1891-02-28
Main Street, Once the Principal Business Street
 is Roy one Vast Sheet of Water


 the hills and mesas have not but the town homely as she was called, but still the "Des- ert Gate" for years and for thous- ands who rushed to the Pacific for gold is gone. When last we went to press, the wires, the mall, our exchanges, friends, strangers and tramps brought the news, the flood is coming. Everybody all most listened and believed and went to wolk preparing for 1t. Old timers talked of '62 and '84, looked wise and were believed. The Col- orado, the Nile of the West rolled on to the sea, silently, with scarce ly a ripple. The sky was hay then thick, black, and the rams came and fell. Saturday was @ thoughtful day, Sunday was serl- ous.
 Saturday night Gandolfo < San guinette took their whole force ln their store and more outside and went to work on the levee. Good work was done but it was of no use, Sunday almost everybody went to work with will. Up came the
 waters, higher and higher, until they reached the top of the levee and over it.
 The wall held well but the
 great bank of water behind 1t il3 miles in length by 10 miles
 wide rolled on into the Colorado and carried the leYee with it. In 20 minutes the water rose at the foot of the streets 9 feet. During this 20 minutes, one by one, fell house after house. In the 7 or 5 hours of the flood nearly every house on Gila street, and nearly i every building on the east side ot i Main gt--et melted like sugar Tn the waters of the flood. On rolled ! the water carrying ruin and de-
 sfruction wherever 1t went. The people were warned again and
 again and acted promptly, moving
 everything they could to the hills
 or higher ground. The levee built ;I along the Gila broke in 3placeF at 5:3O, in 1 hours the worst was lover but not until ruin had reached
 many a home. Not less than 5C
 houses fell. The occupants went
 anywhere they could find shelter
 To add to the worst the rain fell l in torrents wetting everything and
 everybody. At 10 p. m. the force
 of the waters slackened little and
 the weight of fear and anxiety was l lifted a little from the minds oI a everybody in town. No can one e8tl'
 mate the loss either in Yuma ol
 the county. The business men 1T
 Yuma wko are competent to judge
 think that the county has lost nc 1 less that $2,O00,O00. This includes
 loss in cattle, horses, mules anC
 ranches. Yuma itself lost TO les.
 than $500,000, not to count thu ;, great amount of work that wa i done to save the levee and privat' i property. Great credit is due Gan dolfo and Sanguinetti. Eugen Sanguinetti worked like tiger da! , and night never letting off a mo- ment. The same can be said o t Althee Modegti, SheriE Nugent Frank Townsend, F. L. Ewin l and many others. The loss fall ; heaviest on the poor who lost al that they had. Their houses no 0 so elegent, yet were homes t
 them. The little they had all melt g ed away in 2 single hour and the, T were left homeless, no food n
 money, everything gone. Home $ food and all gone. The only plac al left is the roof of some neighbor e or friend, or the sand hills of tn e mesa. Che thing is in Yuma ' favor, and that is her climate. N t cold, no frost, only for this ne d people would have suffered be l yond any estimate. All we ca of say at the present time is, watt e from bank to bank, from mesa O. mesa, in fact the whole countr 2. under water.
 2 THE LOSSES.
 l. Sc far as we can learn rem Il