HURTLING DEATH

Hokitika Guardian, 29 March 1932, Page 2

HURTLING DEATH

TOLL OF LANDSLIDES

VANCOUVER, March 3.

Warm rains loosening heavy winter snows, started tloods which have killed II in the Vancouver area. Eight are •missing. Three were lost when ail avalanche swept through the village of Edgewick. Four were buried in a snowslide cro* sing the nigh way which the city of Seattle maintains for its waterworks department. The most dramatic disaster was in Issaquah (Washington State), where a canyon had been dammed for several days by a natural barrier ol bouldeis, tree trunks, and earth swept down by previous landslides. Before daylight the dam burst with a deafening roar. A 60it wall of water tore through the canyon, ana sheared off the upper storey of the home of Albert Johnson. The father and one son were drowned. Neighbours, after a terrific fight, rescued •Mrs Johnson and two small girls.

Late the same night further avalanches occurred in the Cascade Mountains. within 50 miles of Seattle. Two hundred men in peril from threatened new slides dug frantically for bodies. (In one section 60 workers, striving feverishly to lescue four missing residents, were compelled half a dozen times to llee for their lives.

1 Four men /and two children were buried near the railway village of Edgewick, They must hours, before ’ have been crushed or smothered to -death-