Floods and Fires.

Manawatu Herald, 11 June 1903, Page 2

Floods and Fires.

A cloud burst over, the'dam at Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the heavy rainfall swept it away. The country was flooded, and a number of cotton mills were wrecked. The damage done is estimated at two million dollars (£400,000). [Spartanburg is 93 miles by rail north-north-west of Columbia, capital of South Carolina.] _ - Every building in Pancelofc, a place containing a thousand inhabitants, was wrecked, and many persons were drowned.

Forest fires are still raging in the North Atlantic States. The Washington “ Observer ” states that six hundred miles of sea coast are affected, dense |smoke rendering navigation difficult. Mr William Rookfeller, Mr Robert Pruyn, and other millionaires have sent three thousand fire-fighters to, the Adirondack ranges, Now York State, where hundreds of farmers are fleeing for their lives. The villages of Sherman and Crystal Lake, in the State of Maine, have been destroyed by fire, and a thousand people rendered homeless. Rain has checked the fires in the United States. The estimate of the damage already caused is twenty millions sterling. 6ix thousand men are fighting the flames in Cuxada, with but small success. Seven towns have been distroyed, the largest being Hopewell. The damage in Canada is estimated at five millions sterling. Prayers for rain are general. Reuter’s Agency states that two hundred th msand acres _of ■ fertile farms within a radius of twenty-five miles of St, Louis are flooded. Only the tops of houses are visible. Martial law has been proclaimed in the flooded and looters ordered to ha shot. The Congaree river, in South Carolina, is running thirteen feet above the danger line, and sweeping seaward debris from the Piedmont districts. An enormous flood wave struck the Pacelofct Mills and other mill towns. The War Department at Atlanta, in the State of Georgia, despatched rations and medicines by a steamer, and rescued two hundred, people from the housetops at Blackwalnut, Fifteen men, who are trying to strengthen a wall near Madison, in the same State, were drowned. Fifty operatives were drowned by the flood caused through the bursting of a dam at Spartanburg, in South Carolina. A group of cities on the east side of the Mississippi, north-east of St Louis, are ten to eighteen feet under water. Seven hundred people spent the night on house-tops, and were rescued in boats. Railway traffic in the flooded district is suspended. Showers have fallen and diminished the danger from the forest fires in, Canada, which are now confined to three counties bordering the St. Lawrence.

Many women heroically aided in fighting the flames. Several towns were completely isolated for days owing to the suspension of the railways and the destruction of telegraph lines.