THE ARIZONA DISASTER.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 461, 9 April 1890, Page 4

THE ARIZONA DISASTER.

A special despatch to the New York papers on February ii7th says : A courier has just arrived from the lower dam on the Hassayampa. He reports that a tremendous mountain of water came down the Hassayampa about 2 o’clock on Saturday morning, and that fifty-five lives have been lost at the lower dam, where they were at work. They were all whites, except three Chinese. He reports that Wickenberg is all right. The loss of life in the valley between Wickenberg and the dam may not be known for some days, but it is. withou doubt considerable—possibly thirty or forty. The courier states that the up per dam had undoubtedly broken and carried the other two dams below down with it. The loss of property in the dams alone will amount to about SBOO,OOO. The valley from Wickenberg to the dam is inhabited by Mexican miners and ranch men.

The first sign of the break was the snapping of a large steel cable connecting the tower in the middle of the dam with the bank. This occasioned a loud report, and he said it seemed as if a ball of fire was shot from it.

At first it was thought that it was some giant powder that had been exploded. The next instant the tower tottered, and it seemed as if the entire dam, containing 90,000 tons of rock, all moved bodily at once, the roar of the waters and the grinding of the boulders being perfectly deafening.

F. M. Packer, the placer miner, lived about a mile below the dam. He has long hair, reaching away down on his shoulders, to which he says he owes bis life. When the roof of his cabin, to which he was clinging, floated into the side of the hill his hair caught in some bushes, and, unlike Absalom, his long hair proved the means of saving him instead of causing his death. John Hardee, Ed. Davis and W. M. Russell came in, ali of them being more or less bruised and skinned from climbing a steep hill among the cactus and sharp rocks to escape the flood. John Hardee gave his experience as follows: “ I was camped on a barren creek in a tent, with three others. We went to bed at 10 o’clock. Some time after midnight I was awakened by a deafening roar, when I jumped out of bed and yelled at the others : •My God, boys, the dam has broken ! Get up and run for your lives !’ ' “ We were all dressed only in our underclothes. I saw a wave at least sixty feet high strike the tent, and it was gone. The distance between the bluffs at this point is about 200 yards, and the water filled this space sixty feet deep. “ A huge boulder, weighing hundreds of tone, in front of our tent was swept away, and next day I went down the cut five miles in search ol bodies and found no trace of it. At the upper dam the company had a twenty horse-power upright boiler and engines that had been used in running a sawmill, and not even a bolt on it was to be found. . “As far down the stream as Wickenberg, thirty miles below, some lumber had been left on a high bluff near the lower dam, which was not reached by the water. Coffins are being made of. this, and then floated down the stream to where the bodies are found, the latter being buried where found. The bodies when found have all been badly mutilated, - some even beyond recognition.” Thirty-seven bodies in all have been covered.