FATHER’S AGONY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 247, 9 January 1928, Page 1

FATHER’S AGONY

FOUR CHILDREN DROWNED TERRIBLE EXPERIENCES LONDON, Saturday. As a result of the amazing floods the death roll is known to be 14, including four sisters named Harding, ranging from 2 to 18 years

j of age, who were drowned in a | basement <sr the Thames embankment. They must have been instantly overwhelmed. It was a night of. terror and tragedy between Lambeth and Vauxhail Bridges. The flood closed the door on a man who returned to a basement room for his valuables and he was drowned. The river steamers grotesquely rode at street level. The underground railways are dislocated by the floods, and the power stations are paralysed. Two servants were drowned in a basement at Hammersmith. Remarkable heroism was shown by Miss Frank Isse. After escaping from a flooded flat at Putney she returned, and breaking a window, swam round the room and rescued several others. Nevertheless, two were drowned, and their bodies have not been recovered. HEROIC RESCUE EFFORTS There was no recurrence of the floods in London to-day, but the Port of London Authority has issued a warning that they may be repeated, as the tides are likely to increase until Tuesday. » The breaches in the embankment wall have been temporarily repaired by sand-bags. Most of the deaths by drowning occurred at Westminster, where the poor people in the tenements near the Houses of Parliament were the worst sufferers. Heroic efforts to rescue those imprisoned were made last night by the police and neighbours. Mr. Harding, an artisan, _whose four daughters were drowned in their beds, had a terrible experience. The girls were sleeping in one room in the basement. Mr. Harding rushed down when he heard the pitiful cries of the girls, to open the door, but the water was so deep that all his powerful, prolonged and desperate exertions were unavailing. He had to give up the attempt and go upstairs to rescue his wife and his other children. Priceless pictures housed in the basement of the Tate Gallery, mostly sketches by J. M. W. Turner, were soaked, and it is feared that many were ruined. Many houses in_ Stamford Street, parallel to the Thames, leading to Waterloo station, were inundated. Three hundred women and children took refuge in a chapel. At the Union Cold Storage works 150 men ceased working when the water reached the machinery. Colonel Harry Day, M.P., telephoned that the furniture in his flat at Westminster was floating. THAMES BECOMES MENACE A boy who was asleep in a house at Broadwall, Blackfriars, was washed from his bed, but he managed to scramble to safety. Another victim of the floods was an elderly woman, who was drowned in the basement of a house in Couston Street, close to Vauxhail Bridge. Firemen were pumping out the basements at 3.30 a.m. to-da:y. The turning of the tide helped to save the situation. Residents in one district were warned by lightermen hammering at their doors. The people rushed out in their nightclothes. It is believed that those drowned in Westminster basements included the porter of the Tate Gallery. The floods reached the Jewel Chamber in the Tower. At Blackwall Tunnel, and near Lambeth Place,, mounted police rescued terror-stricken women and children In many of the low-lying streets. This is the most sudden and serious flood that has occurred in London in living memory. The “Observer” describes it as the worst shock to London’s complaceny since the war. It has revealed a parlously weak spot in the defences of the metropolis, says the paper, which cannot be repaired by the mere extension and strengthening of the embankments. The Thames has developed a menace unknown for upwards of a century, because the national system of land drainage has fallen hopelessly into arrears.—A. and N.Z.-Sun.