Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1897-03-25
ELEMENTS IN A RIOT.
TREMENDOUS DAMAGE OVER A
WIDE AREA.
Wisconsin,, thc Dakotas. Minnesota,
Nebraska, Iowa. Tennessee, Arkan-
sas, Mississippi and Alabama Suffer
from the Greatest Visitation I'm Years


/ anu tnC &o"Cs
| The peculiar meteorological conditions
of the past few weeks eliminated Friday
and Saturday in floods which for vast
| ness of volume and extent excel anything
In the history of the country. All sec
tons of the middle West, Northwest ant
I South report tremendous damage by ris
ing and uncontrolled streams. Bridges
were swept from highways and railways
lowlands were flooded to navigabls
depth; farms, plantations and cities which
for years had suffered immunity from
such danger, became submerged; millions
of dollars of damage to buildings and
live stock resulted. In Missouri there
| occurred great loss of life; while in Ten
nessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Wisconsin
| and Iowa thousands of people were driven
| from their homes in imminent peril, to
watch the destruction of everything they
had in the world.
OF Northern cities, Milwaukee was the
worst sufferer The district of the city
known as the Menominee Valley, was
submerged to n depth of over ten feet,
and large number of people were i'm
prisoned in their homes for hours until
boats were sent to rescue them. Fully
fifty houses had water up to the second
story. and hundreds were made untenable.
The West Milwaukee shops were flooded,
and the bridge at the Monarch stone
quarry was carried out. Easements in
the business district were filled, as was
also the condition Mt Fond du Lac and
Oshkosh. Elroy lost her great iron
bridge, and at Port Washington the rail-
way bridge and freight train were
wrecked. At Kenosha and Richland
streams were out of banks.
At Luverne, Mimi, the Little Rock
River was mile wide, pouring vast
volume into the Sioux. A dozen bridges
in Southwestern Minnesota went down,
and all traffic on several branches of the
Great Northern. Northwestern and Mil
waukee lines running Northwest Iowa
and Eastern South Dakota was sus-
pended.
Advices from Omaha say: with every
stream in Nebraska and Western Iowa
pouring a flood of unusual proportions
into the Missouri River and the enor-
nous volume of water coming down
from the north from the tributaries OF
that stream, the indications are that one
of the most disastrous floods in this re-
gion of the Missouri valley is certain.
TOIn the uOTlu 10 the bOutn oldtc iihO
of Nebraska the Missouri is full of heavy
ice, and In some places, the channel is
solidly blocked with enormous gorges OF
ice. The frequency with which these
gorges are forming and giving way in
the Missouri and its Nebraska tributaries
is causing the volume of water to fuc-
tuate in the most remarkable manner.
Thus far the damage in the interior Of
the State as q result of the swollen
streams is much heavier than along the
Missouri where the real force of the flood
has scarcely yet been felt. The damage
along the Missouri is confined very large
ly to the Iowa side, where the land Is
much lower than on the western shore"
United States Weather Observer Welsh
of Omaha said Friday night: Il do not
desire to pose as an alarmist, but l can
not see how the Missouri Valley in this
locality can possibly escape a most dis
astrous flood. Perhaps the ice may move
out before the greater volume of water
Is released from the north, but the indi-
cations now are most alarming. My ad-
vice is to those on the lowlands in Iowa
and Nebraska TO prepare to see some ex-
ceedingly high water"
The ice is solid in the Missouri at Sioux
City, and the river is rising rapidly.
Gorges are forming and the people living
along the lowlands are vacating their
homes and moving their property to high
er grounds. At scores of points large
forces of men are at work with dynamite
breaking up tee ice gorges. At Sioux
City the Sioux City and Northern bridge
went out, as did all other structures over
the Floyd from lie Mars down. The Big
Sioux passed all previous marks, entire
ly flooding the village of Westfeld and
making a clean sweep of Milwaukee and
st. Paul bridges and culverts.
In the Minnesota-South Dakota affect
ed districts. many towns were submerged,
and all rail traffic stopped. Luverne,
Spring Valley, Faribault and Preston, in
Minnesota, and Centerville, Vermilion,
Pembina. and jamestown, in the Da-
kotas, all suffered severely.
A giant crevasse at Charlottesville, Mo-,
supposed to have been cut by parties from
above on the Tennessee side to release
the waters and save the upper districts
from the deluge, let the water rush over
miles and miles of fertile country, de-
stroying everything in its path. Several
Government boats were in the vicinity,
and work of repair Immediately COM
menced. At first it was greatly impeded
by the earth being all mud; but soon bags
of sand were utilized, and hundreds of
tons Of this material anchored the ends
of the break, so that connections by chain
booms and refuse could be made. Seven
teen lives are reported lost from this To-
cality.
In Tennessee, Memphis was high and
dry, yet surrounded by water; and the
city was overrun by thousands Of refu-
gees, brought in by steamers which had
navigated over what is ordinarily fertile
territory. These refugees were In the
most abject restitution, nearly all col
ored, and very unruly. Relief from out
side will surely be needed. For several
days six regular steam craft were en-
gagged in penetrating the flooded coun-
try to the uttcrmost possible limit, and
beyond that limit almost innumerabis
smaller vessels have been pushed to the
remotest corners.
Various Mississippi, Louisiana and Ala
bama points report, aside from enormous
destruction by water, tornadoes of the
severest type. Nearly every place affict-
ed reports from one to five fatalities.
Utica and Brander, Miss, were especially
severe sufferers. From the Warrior River
above Tuscaloosa, Ala, five corpses were
recovered.
Chicago's particular portion of these
remarkable conditions took the form of
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