An Awful Avalanche.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 920, 23 February 1881, Page 3

An Awful Avalanche.

Life Destroyed and Houses Buried by its Resistless Force.Salt Lake, Jan. 14. • The Tribune's Alta, "Utah, correspondent furnishes the following particulars of a great storm and disastrous snow slides at that place last night. The storm here to-day has been the most severe ever witnessed in the mountains, great sheets of snow falling so that it was impossible to venture beyond one’s door, and slides were frequent. The first occurred at ten o’clock, and started nearly at the top of the mountain in the vicinity of the Rough and Ready mine. It came crushing down the mountain side, carrying away the flagstaff, ore house, three or four hundred feet of railroad snow-sheds and telegraph poles, and thence across the flat and creek and up the opposite mountains. The conconcussion was so great as to break open doors and window’s of houses in the vicinity. At 12 o’clock another slide broke up Davenport Gulch, passed over the Imperial and Victoria boarding-house, in which were two men. The house was covered to a depth of 20 feet, and the men were 10 hours digging their way out. This slide continued down the mountain and swept the boarding-house of the Grizzly mine. Here was the most awful disaster of the terrible night. In this house was Mrs. Jonathan Harkins and four children, three boys and a girl, aged about 12 years ; also, Charles Lymons, Robert Howcorth and Evan Morris. Lymons and the eldest boy of Mrs. Harkins were sleeping up-stairs and were throwm out of the house unhurt, but all the rest were buried in the slide. The alarm was given by the survivors, and the miners at the City of Rocks began the work of excavation, joined by miners of the Prince of Wales and ot hers from Alta. The work continued until 10 o’clock this morning, when two little boys were taken out alive, one injured in the back. Mrs. Harkins and her daughter Jenny were discovered dead, but the bodies of Howcorth and Morris still remain in the slide. Another slide occurred at the Toledo mine, carrying away the compressor and boarding-house. Charles Borbridge and Frank Laporte were in the house at the time. Their bodies were rescued this morning by a rescuing party. There is no doubt but more lives have been lost and more property destroyed, but the above is all that is known at present. The storm still rages, and there is a reign of terror in the canons.