Record 1894 Flood Levels Already Passed

Chronicle (Levin), 19 March 1947, Page 5

Record 1894 Flood Levels Already Passed

Press Assn.-

By Telegraph

-Copyright

Received Wednesday, 10.35 a.m. LONDON, March 18. The Thames Conservancy Board has ceased to predict how the floods might develop. The record levels of 1894 have already been passed _ in many places and the river is likely to conti'nue to rise. The Thames is three miles wide at Chertsey. A conservancy official at Reading said: "We are really terribly Wbrried. There is 110 saying what might happen." People in Abertillery, in Monmouthshire, who a few weeks ago were queueing for coal, are now queueing for roofing slates as a result of the hurricane damage. A man who was returnrng with his wife in a boat to their home in Chertsy to collect bedding and food was drowned when the craft overturned. His wife was rescued. A soldier on demobilisation leave, upon whom a church pinnacle fell during the gale on the night of March 16, has died in hospital. ' The water in some parts of Maidenhead is four and five feet deep. Telephones and electricity supplies have failed. The Automobile Association said that roads are impassable through floods within a rough square with corners at Holyhead, Grimsby, Torquay and Harwich. Snow and ice are still blocking many roads in North England and Scotland. Only one "priority route" is open to Scotland.