Cresco plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1913-1945, 1913-03-28
BIG>Fl00DS
IN INDIANA
and OHIO
Large Death List at
Various Points,
PROPERTY LOSS HEAVY
Main Streets Of Dayton, O., Un-
der Water and Many Per.
sons Drowned.
PROPERTY LOSS HEAVY

Dayton, O., March 26.-Dayton is
nothing less than a seething river
three miles wide, mile and half on
each side of Main street; its principal
thoroughfare, while it is estimated
that from two to five thousand people
have persisted. T.
Gloom reigns supreme. The Algon-
quin hotel is submerged in water up
to its third story and above this level
in the downtown district Office build
ings, hotels and business houses are
places of refuge.
A school building that was known
to have housed no less than 400 school
children shortly before the waters
rushed in that direction is entirely
submerged and as far as can be ascer-
tanned all of those little ones met a
watery grave.
The property loss will total millions
OF dollars.
The flooded district comprises a
practical circle with a radius of q
mile and a half and in no place is the
water less than six feet deep. In
Main street, in the downtown section,
the water Is twenty feet deep.
The horror of the flooded district is
heightened by more than dozen fires
which can be seen, but out OF reach
of the fire fighters.
Most of the business houses and
nearly all of the residences have oc.
cupants. Downtown the offices are
filled with men, who are unable to get
home, and on the upper floors and
some of the roofs of the residences
are helpless women and children.
Hundreds of houses, substantial
buildings in the residence districts,
many of them with helpless occu-
pants, have been washed away.
The number of drowned cannot be
estimated until the flood subsidies.
St. Elizabeth hospital, with 600 pa
tients, was reported to have been
washed away. The buildings were
known to be in many feet OF water
and indications are that the report
may prove true.
Famine. became an immediate pos
sibility.
Threatened With Starvation.
All of the supply and grocery houses
are in the submerged district and it
was said there was not enough bread
to last the survivors another day.
John II. Patterson, president Of the
National Cash Register company, who
headed the relief work in the south
end of the city, sent out an appeal for
food supplies and for doctors and medi-
cine. Three thousand homeless were
housed in the cash register building.
A fire which started from an explo-
pany near Wyoming street spread and
burned the block on South Park,
about a block from Wyoming. An
other big Ere is reported to have
burned downtown block.
The breaking Of the Tarleton reser-
voir, which supplies the drinking wa
ter, left the city without water and
physicians declared there was great
danger of typhoid in the use of the
flood water.
= There are no boats in Dayton which
can breast the current and those on
Rsthe outside early gave up attempts to
reach the business section.
How many houses have been swept
away and how many occupants were
carried to their deaths cannot be
learned until the water recedes.
At Wyoming street, on the south
side, where the National Cash Regis
ter company centered its efforts at
rescue, many saved their lives by
creeping on a telephone cable, hun
dred feet above the floor.