HORROR AT VANPORT.

Chronicle (Levin), 1 June 1948, Page 5

HORROR AT VANPORT.

Reeeived Monday, 10 p.m. NEAV YORK, May 30. A new horror was added today to the floods devastating vast sections of the North West Pacifie States, when a wall of water burst through a dyke surrounding the low lying area of Vanport in Oregon, drowning many persons. As the water burst into the west edge of the sprawling eommunity, which was built as a shipyard city

during the war, hundrecls of men, women and children were swept off their feet. Mothers saw their children carried away by the water. Many slipped from the grasp of their parents as they dashed madly for upper floors of apartiiient houses. An Associated Press reporter said: ''It was a madhouse of people trying to save their lives, their families and their goods." Three hundred were trapped in the second floors of houses but they were saved. Oue survivor said the water was waist decp be fore the eommunity knew the winter had broken through. His wife swara to higher ground and he plunged through earrying their baby. A woman and child and another woman who were clinging to him, wero swept away. He did not see them again. There were hundreds of children playing in the eommunity area in the warin Sun day after noon sunshine. The two exits from the low area of the eommunity to a highway well above the flood level. were jammed, blocking the way for pedestrians scramhling to get away from the rising water.