BLIZZARD DISASTER

Hokitika Guardian, 30 March 1931, Page 5

BLIZZARD DISASTER

CHILDREN FROZEN. IN yOU 1 -WEST U.S.A. (United PrKss Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright). VANCOUVER, .March 28. A message from Towner, in Colorado, descriijcs a storm tragedy in which five children, their ages being from six to sixteen, froze to death while huddled with eighteen others in a school omnibus that was stuck in a fifteen-foot snow drift for thirty hours. The tragedy was revealed to-day. The children had been dismissed from school on Thursday, when a blizzard .threatened to block the roads. The storm struck them so suddenly that the omnibus had completed only on,, mile of its eleven mile trip to the children’s homes, and it ran into a ditch. A fifteen-foot drift soon engulfed the vehicle, and the snow and sleet quickly buried any possible fuel supply. The children were frightened and hungry. They kept close together in an attempt to keep warm. The omnibus driver remained with the children till Friday. Then he struck out. alone to summon aid. He is still missing.

MANY DEATHS OCCUR. NEW YORK, March 28, Tile bus driver who started for help in the bliraard at Towner also penciled, : The survivors wore removed to-day by rescuers, ten receiving emergency treatment. They' are suffering from cold and pneumonia, with further deaths probable.' T'’-' children burned their schoolbooks and the plank seats to keep warm, but tb e intense cold overcame them after a sturdy fight. The blizzard >in tile Rocky Mountain and Plains States has resulted in at least twelve deaths, including the Towner bus tragedy, and three aremissing and are believed to have perished. ' Scores are in a serious condition, buffering from frost bite and exposure.

Twenty children and a teacher were rescued from a schoolhouse at Horace, in Kansas, after being isolated for two days and a night. Physicians and charity agencies are being mobilised over a wide area, including Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, Nebraska tbe western parts of Kansas, Okhihama and Texas. Cattle by the hundreds standing in snowdrifts were frozen to death.

TERRIBLE SU FFERIN Ci S. (Received this day at 8 n.ra ) NEW YORK, March 29. All the seventeen survivors are suffering from pneumonia, and freezing tuul have only U fighting change for their lives. A neighbouring riihcbiiiah looking for ‘ Jest cattle discovered the bus and car-' vied the youngsters to his two room hut. 1 An airplane from Pueblo brought tivo youngsters back. The remainder i lie on th e floor, and although a physician and a nurse are present, they are hampered for Jack of medical supplies. The driver of the bus was found later to-day frozen to death in a field several miles away. Bryan Untied, thirteen, is the oldest boy in the bus who is alive, but ’““'suffering from pneumonia and whose frozen legs and arms may have to be 1 amputated. Describing what happened offer the driver left, he said “one of the •kids broke the window of the car by accident and we were-unable to keep the cold air out. The kids were then cold that T was unable to get them to i move. I started some boxing matches, but they did not last. I noticed my brother Orlo freezing. T gave him all my clothes, except my underwear but he died . Anyway T was exhausted and lay down in a pile with the rest.”

Eleven persons died in Western snowstorms. A teacher and twenty students were marooned in a Kansas school house, but escaped without serious ill effects. ' . A‘ bus driver with four .Sheriden, Lake Colorado school children, missing since Thursday morning, were found safe in a farm house. A seventy mile gale was accompanied by snowstorms and temperatures s,nb zero. It was the worst storm for half a century. ;