TELEPHONE GIRL’S PLUCK

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1071, 18 November 1911, Page 4

TELEPHONE GIRL’S PLUCK

Ni-;w Vukk;, September 13

Many thrilling stone.- oi heroism aie lu hand to-day respecting the great clam disaster at Austin. Pennsylvania, which resulted In the destruction of the town and great loss of life. Tics death roll it is now said, will not exceed 260.

Particularly striking is the tale told ui Lucy Binekcy, a telephone operator at Austin, who stuck to her switchboard, sending messages .to the neighbouring town ot Costello, until death by drowning seemed certain.

The girl had in the first instance been rung up by her sweetheart who bad shouted over the wire ; “Dam bursting. Get to the hills.” Thinking the young man was joking, the operator told him not to he foolish. Then, delecting anxiety in her lover’s voice, she realised the situation, and proceeded to wire warnings of the pending disaster to as many subscribers as she could reach.

“I heard a roar like thunder up the valley,” she told a reporter. “1 began to work the switch plugs to call as many people as I could, and I also caused steam whistles in the town to be blown and the hells rung, thinking this would bring the people into the street, to see the danger themselves in time to flee.

“ Finally my switchboard failed 10 work. From where I stood I could see a wall of water fifty feet high, in which houses were tossed until they fell to pieces. I continued ringing up till I saw the spire of the Presbyterian Church topple over. Then lied up the hillside.”

Mary Blaitz, a mill worker, told the surgeons and reporters in the hospital how it teels to have a leg amputated by an axe. “1 was busy at work,’’ she said, “when suddenly there lurched through the wall a grinding stone. The rescuers louud me later pinned beneath it, and tried to release me hut iailed.

“ ‘Get an axe ; cut my leg oil,’ I told them, but do man would volunteer to cut it off. I pleaded 'Yon can stand it if I can.’ I looked up and saw Joe Vonarge, a friend oi mine. ‘You do it 101 me, Joe,’ I begged. T—l can’t do that, Mary,’ he said. “ Then I asked a big man behind him to do it aud he picked up the axe. By lantern light I saw the axe descending, aud I think he chopped tour or five times belore they could get me tree from the pressure ol the millstone.” The plucky girl is expected to recover.