GREAT FLOOD DISASTER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 914, 6 March 1930, Page 1

GREAT FLOOD DISASTER

French Towns Inundated LOSS OF 400 LIVES FEARED Scores Trapped While Asleep TRAGIC and disastrous floods, resulting in a. heavy loss ofc* life and great destruction of property, have occurred in the South of France. It is reported that every hour brings news of fresh disaster and the death-roll is feared to he at least 400. Farmers and their families have been drowned by the score in the deeply inundated districts, and terrible stories are being told of men and women trapped in their sleep by the rising waters. The rivers Tarn, Orb and Herault are chiefly responsible for the worst French floods in fifty vears.

It is officially announced homeless in Moissac.

that 150 are dead and 3,000

United P. A.—By Telegraph—Copyright Reed. 11 a.m. LONDON, Wednesday.

The "Evening News’s” correspondent says that every hour brings fresh news of the French flood disaster. The death-roll is now believed to be at least 400, including scores of farmers and their families, who have been drowned. The districts are inundated to a depth of many feet by three rivers, the Tarn, the Orb, and the Herault, which have burst their banks, cutting off from the world the towns of Montanban. Beziers, and Moissac, and isolating hundreds of villages. Panic-stricken refugees from Moissac arriving in Toulouse relate terrible stories of a midnight inundation, trapping hundreds in their sleep. Scores were tramped to death by mothers who, terror-stricken, were fighting to escape. Thirty houses in one street alone were swept away by x wall of water, and others collapsed, burying their occupants. It is reported that some roads are flooded to a depth of 45 feet. Relief is impossible owing to a lack of boats, although hundreds can be seen on the roofs calling for help. A thousand cattle have been drowned. TORRENTIAL RAIN FALLS Torrential rain in the Languedoc region caused the loss of more than 30 lives. Rivers overflowed, farms were devastated, miles of railway lines were destroyed, bridges collapsed, and vineyards were submerged. The city of Perpignan is completely isolated, and 600 men are marooned in a partly destroyed factory at Castres. The inhabitants of Montauban believed the end of the world had come when houses fell down. Patients were removed from a hospital in boats. More rain has fallen in the last 24 hours than the average for the year. In addition, water poured down from the snow-clad mountains. Four Cabinet Ministers have gone to supervise relief operations. It is feared that the death-roll will be nearly 100. Heart-rending scenes occurred in villages near Montauban, where people marooned on roofs prayed for help. One hundred houses collapsed in the village of Reynes. AID FROM TROOPS An aged parish priest at the village named was saved, but his housekeeper perished in the ruins of the presbytery. One of the rescuers was drowned, and another had to swim for his life. The Toulouse correspondent of the "Daily Mail” says the floods are the worst experienced in the South of France since 1875. Hundreds of miles of roads have disappeared, and bridges have been swept away. The River Tarn rose suddenly while the inhabitants of Montauban were in bed. Soldiers and policemen formed a chain in order to rescue one family, but the trunk of a tree swept down upon them, and 10 soldiers were drowned. Scores of the inhabitants of Castres are believed to have been drowned when the waters rose and overwhelmed their dwellings. The correspondent says the floods were caused by the melting of heavy snowfalls at Cevennes. The damage i« estimated at millions of pounds. Montauban, capital of the Department of Tarn-et-Garonne, is a cathedral town of over 30,000 on the River Tarn, 100 miles south-east of Bordeaux. Nearby is the smaller town of Moissac, also on the Tarn, and with a population of 5,000 odd. To the south-east and on the River Orb lies the city of Bezirs, with a popula-

tion o£ over 50,000 —a prosperous centre with ancient associations, renowned for its woollen manufactures. AH three lie in the noted canal and waterway districts of Southern Prance. Languedoc is an old province in the south of France, the capital of which used to be Toulouse, now in the department of Haute-Garonne. Perpignon is the capital of the department of Pyrenees-Orientales, 35 miles south-west of Narbonne. Castees is in the department of Tarn on the Agout, 2fi miles south-east of Albi. MOISSAC SWEPT LOSS OF FRENCH VINEYARDS HOSPITAL ISOLATED Reed. 12.30 p.m. LONDON, Wed. Eighty per cent, of the houses in the Tarn and Garonne valleys are destroyed. As a climax to the Mount Auban floods the dam burst and a torrent 10ft deep swept through Moissac and carried off 50 houses, then spread over the Garonne Valley for 40 miles. It is not known exactly how nany of Moissac’s 9,000 inhabitants perished. Five hundred families are homeless in Castres and rafts had ‘o be improvised for patients and lursea from the Saint Ouen Hospital. One-fifth of France’s richest vineyards have been destroyed.