LATEST PARTICULARS.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 134, 6 December 1893, Page 2

LATEST PARTICULARS.

MARVELLOUS ESCAPES FROM DROWNING. ENORMOUS LOSS OF SHEEP, Napikh, This Day. Information as to the damage done by the floods comes throngh but slowly owing to the impassibility of the roads along the line of telegraph. Though it has been fine for 10 hoars, the waters have gone down very little. When the boats reaohed East Clive, the residents were found better oft than was expected, and though some were perched on the roofs of houses, only one woman would leave in the boats. At Waipawa all the residents in the threatened houses were rescued, At Waipukurau one family were nearly drowned. Their house was carried bodily some distance down the stream. In the morning a boat was got, and they were all rescued, much exhausted.

There will be very great distress, and the Herald has already opened a fund for the relief cf settlers. A young man named John Clare called at Birch's Station, and inquired the way to Anderson's. Soon afterwards he was seen in difficulties in the river and he rolled off his horse, not being seen any more. Some people had wonderful escapes. One woman sat with six children on the roof all night with nothing in sight but water for miles ; another woman, a widow, alone in her cottage, suddenly found her bed floating about. The water rising higher and higher she climbed on a dresser shelf, and passing a handkerchief through a ring in the roof clung on all night. It is wonderlul how all managed to escape at Clive without loss of life as the boats crews, in some instances, had to prize the weatherboards off the cottages and let the people out at the gable ends. The loss of sheep is enormous,