THE SYDNEY GALE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 59, 11 March 1913, Page 5

THE SYDNEY GALE.

SENS ATION AL D ETA ILS. (By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Coiled Press Association.) Sydney, March 10. M any of the city and suburban shops and warehouses suffered severely from storm water percolating through tho root's and inundating tho basements. Tho theatre emptied in the middle of a deluge. It was an unusual sight to see richly-dressed women divested of their shoos and stockings wading the Hooded street to reach the trams. At Bondi the dammed Hood waters swept through the lower bedrooms of the hotel, where a man and several waitresses were sleeping. The man escaped and the women took refuge on the heavier pieces of furniture, the lighter of which were carried away) by a rush of water several feet deep. One woman climbed on to a verandah, and the others were rescued with difficulty. Manly fared badly. The roads were torn up, and many houses were damaged by the force of the water, which! formed a lagoon. At Manly Vale| houses were deeply inundated, and fur-j niture was floating in the rooms. The poultry farmers are great 3os-| ers.

A man named Waters* was washed out of a motor boat moored at the wharf and drowned. The sea was so rough that his would-be rescuers were unable to reach him.

At Sylvania, on St. Oeorge’s'river, four girls had a sensational escape. Their house was unroofed, and the debris smashed the beds where the girls were sleeping. They were practically unhurt. In the low lands around Marricksville the river scattered furniture and household belongings were swept from tho houses, mixed with dead poultry, cats, and dogs. A number of horses were also drowned. The roof of a house at Como was lifted bodily, carried half a mile, and deposited in the river. At Annandale a married couple were penned in a house by tho Hood water. The husband escaped through a window, carrying his sick wife.

The roof of the Imperial Hotel at Clifton was carried on to an adjoining building, where a infant were sleeping. The ceiling collapsed just over the bed. The two lay still till they were rescued. The guests at the hotel were smothered by an avalanche of plaster and broken glass, but no one was injured. Two men left a bedroom just before the tornado struck the hotel, and were returning upstairs when they found that a chimney stack had fallen and smashed to atoms the beds on which, under ordinary circumstances, they would have been sleeping. In ,a* second house the hotel roof struck', .where a main and his wife and child were sleeping. The weight of the debris jammed {the doors, and they had great difficulty in escaping. The danger was increased by falling wreckage.

At the height of the gale in Sydney the wind had a velocity of 6G miles an hour. For a few mlnnies after midnight rain fell at the rate -el' 900 points per hour. A NAVVY CAMP DEVASTATED. Sydney, Mar eh 10. Owing to washaways on the line, four Newcastle pits are tempjrar.Oy idle. The storm is now over. In Gippsland heavy rains u.e falling . The gale struck a big navvies’ camp on the Dlawarra line in the early hours of Sunday morning, and swept away all the tents. Hundreds of men were shivering for hours in torrential rain : . The search for wreckage on the Long Reef was fruitless. The storm did £IOOO damage to Mrs McAthie’s drapery stock.