IMMENSE DAMAGE BY FLOODS IN ENGLAND

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 234, 24 May 1932, Page 5

IMMENSE DAMAGE BY FLOODS IN ENGLAND

(Press. Assn.—

worst for 50 years CLOUD-BURST BRINGS NIGHT OF TERROR TO TOWN WIDESPREAD INUNDATIONS

-By Telegraph — Copyright),

Rec. May 23, 8..0 p.m. LONDON, Monday. Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage was done , throughout England by continued rain during the weekend, which broke the record for 50 years, in many districts causing the most serious floods. In Yorkshire, where scores of farmsteads were cut off, the water converted the fields into lakes, washing away corn and potatoes and killing poultry. Six hundred shops and thousands of houses in Derby are inundated. Many roads in tbe North of England are impassable. Tbe widespread rains, which were of tropical violence, caused floods throughout the country. Over 300,000,000 tons of water fell in the Thames watershed during the weekend. The biggest cloudburst within memory brought a night of terror in the Leicestershire town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where the water demolished a six-foot brick wall, smashed shop windows, and imprisoned half the population in their homes, and cansed thousands of pounds worth of damage. The inhabitants of Rugby were left in the plight of Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," with "water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink," when the floods injured the municipal waterworks stopping the supply. The worst floods for half a century (are reported in Oxfordshire. Barrels of ale were washed into the streets of Stakeby. Telephonic and telegraphic communication was interrupted in many districts, and cattle, pigs and poultry were killed.