Evening star., 1909-04-21
ICE JAM ALARMS CITY
NIAGARA Falls Residents Fear
Destruction.
GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
Mass Threatens to Let Go and Hurl
Community Into Gorge.
THOUSANDS OF LIVES IN PERIL
Hotels and Bridges May Be Swept
Away-War Department Asked
to Give Aid.
THOUSANDS OF LIVES IN PERIL

| NIAGARA FALLS, N. Y, April 21.-lce
at the mouth of Niagara river. between
Fort Niagara and Niagara Lake,
| Ont, has jammed until apparently the
mass rests on the river bed. preventing
| the water passing to Lake Ontario.
Up the river at Lewiston. seven miles
from the fort the ice and water have
risen to the highest point ever known by
white men.
Great masses Of ice are coming down
the upper river. The jam at Lewiston Is
so surprising that fears are now ex-
pressed in this city that the ice may jam
on the reefs above the falls and divert
the great river across the lowlands east
of the city, with a possibility that the
city of Niagara Falls would be hurled
as mass Of debris and wreckage bodily
into the gorge.
Should this happen it would mean the
destruction Of all the great power sources
on this side Of the river. the endangering
of thousands of lives and the stopping
of vast industries in western New York.
The city trembles in fear.
Hotels Endangered.
The hotels that have been endangered
for two weeks in Lewiston are in greater
danger. Water is in the Easements. and
the ice jam is crowding the porch sup
ports so hard that the veranda Of the
Cornell House has been roped to the main
building. while men are hard at work
trying to drive the ice back.
1t is possible for man standing on
the ice to reach the deck of the Lewiston
suspension bridge, which was erected at
a height of eighty-five feet from the
normal level Of the stream. Guys of this
bridge have been broken, and upstream
there is a mass of ice, which, should 1t
start to move, would wipe the bridge from
it's cables.
"The water is a little higher. IL any
thing, than it has been at any time,"
said Proprietor Cornell of the Cornell
House.
1.-The situation is growing worse. The
ice appears restless. and as the water ad-
vances it seems that the ice must move.
but. Of course, II the river recedes 1t
may not.
THE river is certainly rising now.
Should it continue there is nc telling what
will take place before daylight"
War Department Asked for Aid.
President White of Lewiston has wired
Gov. Hughes asking If he can suggest
any relief from the danger that threatens
Collector Merritt of this port has wired
the Secretary of War;. praying that the
United States engineers stationed at Buff
falo be authorized to send tugs laden with
dynamite through the Welland canal to
the mouth OF the river, there to attack
the mighty mass in hopes that it may be
broken and a great flooding of the low
lands below the Lewiston escarpment pre-
vented. The engineers are powerless to
act without authority from Washington.
Supt. Sheehan of the Interna-
tional Railway Company has faith in the
Lewiston suspension bridge. He admits
| the guys are all off the bridge, but says
| there are stays which run from end to
end of the structure, giving it firmness.
The water in the gorge is rising and the
tracks of the Great Gorge railroad are
again inundated.
At the town of Youngstown, the ice,
which is something like sixty feet thick
at various places along the river. has
wedged itself tight against the bottom of
the stream and is jammed against a sand
bar. Should the force OF water and ice
from above this lodged foe be powerful
enough to shove it lakeward. property on
both shores will suffer