St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-09-16
DROWNED IN BED.
The Story Of the Spanish
Floods Hourly Grows in
Horror.
Hundreds Of People Perish in
Bed in the Province of
Toledo.
The Appalling Death List--It
Will Foot Up Two Thou
sand.
Bodies by the Hundred Seen
Floating in the Mad Con-
Suegra.

Suegra.
MADRID, Sept. 15.-The floods, which
have caused so much damage, and
which are already known to have re-
suited in the loss of thousands of lives,
have been general in the south of Spain,
The damage done is simply terrible in
its extent. Several railroad trains have
been derailed, and railroad tracks and
roads are everywhere washed away. In
the province of Toledo the rush of
water from the Consuegra river was so
sudden and unexpected that hundreds
OF people were drowned in their beds.
The aspect of the town is positively
frightful. Four hundred bodies have
already been recovered and at
least a hundred corpses can be seen
hoating in the swollen river.
A national relief fund has been opened,
and all the newspapers announce that
they are ready to receive donations.
The wine and grape crops have been
destroyed throughout the flooded sec
tons of the country. The overflow of
the Consuegra threatens to cause further
damage. Two-thirds of the houses
practically destroyed are still standing,
but their foundations are Slapped, and
they threaten to fall at any moment.
The families saved from drowning are
camped near the dwellings formerly oc-
cupled by them, and are in the greatest
distress from want of food. An esti-
mate classed as moderate one, and
which Is within rather than over .e-rs
The Actual Number, -TrS~'
places the total of the death list at
1000. Large numbers of c0rpses still
rest where they were found. Unless
they are soon Inferred an epidemic of
fever is feared. The municipal and
government authorities are eXerting
themselves to the utmost in order to
relieve the extreme distress existing.
So far as possible the bodies of the
drowned are being gathered from the
are being buried in trenches dug
for their reception. Many of the
bodies found are entirely nude,
showing that they must have been
washed from their beds, or else
in the hurry to escape the drowned peo-
pie must have jumped in night dress
from the windows of the houses only to
meet death in the swollen waters surg
ing around them. Sorrow and priva-
ton. mourning and desolation are to be
met with everywhere through the IN
undated provinces, and from one end of
Spain to the other prayers are uttered
for the dead, and collections are being
taken up for the living. Along the
river banks near the scenes of the most
severely visited districts, heartrendIng
occurrences are witnessed hourly, as
the survivors of
Almost Exterminated Families
recognize their dead and try to save
them from consignment to the common
death trench. The utmost praise is due
TO the troops, physicians and clergy and
Sisters OF Charity, who in this emer-
gency have shown themselves to be
capable of almost superhuman eXertionS
on behalf of the sufferers from this
most disastrous food. All seem actu-
ated by the desire to do everything
possible for both the living and the
dead. Unhappily, the worst is not yet
known, and months of terrible priva-
tionS and extreme suffering are before
the utterly impoverished survivors. The
crops are gone, the cattle swept away,
houses and household furniture ruined.
and all that would enable them to earn
their bread has vanished beneath the
torrents of water which have rolled over
towns and villages, fields and farms, A
positively ravenous feeling of starva-
ton prevailed in many sections of the
fiood-deyasIated country. The gripings
of hunger, the wailing of starving
women and children, have, in several
instances, driven the men to desper-
alton, and they have been goaded to
pillage their luckier or more wealthy
compatriots. Bands of desperate men,
determined to obtain bread at any cost
for their destitute, hunger-tortured fam
lilies have been driven to make raids
upon and pillaging buildings where
they expected to find food. In some
cases the rioters were successful in OBJ
tanning limited supply of -four, wheat
and corn; In most cases they found that
they had had their trouble for nothing,
and that all food had long ago been re-
moved to place of safety or else
Distributed or Sold
to the starving peasantry of the neigh
borhood. The troops have been in
structed to take the most severe meas
ures to protect property. Two tbous-
and kilos of army bread have already
arrived in the flooded districts and the
commisariat corps of all the military
divisions are working night and day to
supply provisions to the starving peo-
pie. When the government delegate in
charge of the first consignment of bread
from the army bakeries arrived in the
flooded country he witnessed a scene
which would have impaired to
heart of stone feeling of sympathy.
On all sides he was beset by the famish-
ing inhabitants, young and old, male
and female, the majority half naked or
clad in rags, most of them on their
nc,
succor. The feverish clamor of these
poor people made the work of distribu-
ton slow and painful. and when all the
bread was gone there still remained
many mouths untitled, many sufferers
who had not been able to obtain even
the smallest portion of this tenn
porary relief. At Almeria, capital
of the province of that name,
the number of dead, as in many other
places, is still unknown, but il is ad
mitted that over 500 houses have been
destroyed, and that large number of
people have persisted. OF course, it is
tails of the flood disaster, but, in addi-
ton to the places already referred to. at
Andaraz the stream has overfowed and
Is running the grape crop. The villages
of Puerto, Lapiche and Villa Franco,
in the province of Ciudad Real, have
been severely rayaged by the floods.
Accounts From Consuegra
are appalling IN the extreme. The
town is heap OF ruins, surrounded by
a vast expanse of water, leaving visible
here and there tree tops, chimneys and
floating wreckage of all kinds. Some
OF the streets have been partially cleared
| and made passable, but they are almost