GALE IN THE HOMELAND.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 29 December 1924, Page 7

GALE IN THE HOMELAND.

HEAVY LOSS OF LIFE. STEAMERS PERISH. HAIRBREADTH ESCAPES. 3Y CABLE-PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT Received Dec. 29, 2.10 p.m LONDON, Dec.’2B. Although the gale is. abating, shipwrecks and floods; accompanied by some loss of life and much damage have occurred -throughout the country. The storm was particularly disastrous to the coastal shipping. A German trawler was lost off the west coast of Scotland with only one survivor out of th© crew of fourteen. The Isle of Wight lifeboats were launched to assist distressed steamers, and battled for hours in the worst sea known in the Channel for years. A landslide near Pontypoal blocked the roadway. Houses, chimneys and walls collapsed in many towns, with hairbreadth escapes. ' Mountainous seas swept Flushing and Boulogne, steamers from end to end when they left Folkstone. , . A naval monitor broke from its moorings at Spithead qnd blew across the Solent, and Was stfranded opposite the shore. Two bodies and amount of wreckage, believed to- belong to a French Vessel, were washed up in Carmarthenshire. Heavy destruction . was wrought in the Rhondda Valley. Many inhabitants who were cut off-hear AbbTystWythbad to be rescued by means of boats. Three hundred tons of loosened earth collapsed oh top of a train in a railway cutting between Brecon and Marthyr, and some of the passengers were .injured.