WORST FOR YEARS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 209, 23 January 1913, Page 6

WORST FOR YEARS.

WEATHER IX EXGLAXD. SNOWSTORMS, GALES AND FLOOD. STEAMERS OX LAXD. London, January 13. Grout Britiun is still snll'cring from a terrible weather visitation.

Blizzards of rain and hail, blinding snowstorms, and terriiic gales swept over the north of England and through Scotland and Ireland (hiring the week-end. The mountain passes were blocked with snow. iSnow ploughs had to be brought into use on the railways, and in some of the country districts of Cumberlaud and the continguous counties there was :i fall of 12 inches.

' Telegraph and telephone wires were broken down in hundreds under the weight of snow, and trains and trams ir. some of the big towns had to stop running because of the inability of ordinary appliances to cope with the persistent fall.

Hirers overflowed, and for scores of miles the countryside in the north is under water.

Steamers lost their tracks while proceeding up river estuaries, arid grounded on flooded farmsteads whose occupants were rowing about in small boats. The huge bog of Castlerea, in Ireland, slipped 20 perches, and the banked-up waters are a menace to the village at the foot of the mountain. At any moment the natural dam may burst, and widespread ruin will be the result. But there was one place that did not fear the weather conditions. Despite a howling blizzard, the competitors in the international ploughing match at Dumfries, Scotland, persevered in their task. They were smothered in snowdrifts, but still they went on, and the competition was decided.

Steamers arriving at the ports report the worst sequence of gales on record.

TALES OF THE STORMS. WRECKS EVERYWHERE. London, January 13. The steamer Dunelin ran on the rocks at Blytli, Scotland and thrilling rescues followed the disaster.

Tremendous seas prevented the lifeboat going to her assistance, and the vessel was too far away from the shore for the rocket brigade to do any good. The crow were helpless, and there was every likelihood of the ship going to pieces in double-quick tiine and all the souls on board being lost.

But at last one of the seamen plunged overboard with a line round his body, and swam through the turmoil of boiling surf. Though buffeted and bruised by the rocks, and terribly exhausted when he was hauled to safety, he managed to establish communication between ship and shore, and the crew was saved.

Off Yarmouth, the steamer Gangaren met her fate in one of the gales. Huge seas swept aboard and put out the fires, but the rocket brigade got a line aboard, and the sailors were drawn to land.

In all, ten wrecks took place around the coast, but in most cases the lifeboats were able to do their duty. Trains in Scotland and in the eountv of -Cumberland, in the north of England, were stuck in the snow all night, and the passengers had difficulty in getting food.

The officers of the liner Celtic, on arrival at Queenstown, Ireland, reported that the vessel had experienced the worst weather of her career.

In mid-Atlantic she picked up a wireless message from another wayfarer stating that she had lost her funnel, that her lifeboats were destroyed, and her steering gear disabled. A Danish steamer is on the rocks closf to Aberdeen, in Scotland. A life-line was sent out to her, and along this seven of the crew clambered. Six others were drowned.

FOG LIKE PEA-SOUP. EXPRESS AND SLOW TRAIN COLLIDE. MANY KILLED AND INJURED. STEAMER'S LONG TRIP. FIFTY DAYS TO CROSS ATLANTIC. London, January 14. The weather in Great Britain gets worse instead of better. Yesterday London had its taste of the visitation, and was shrouded in the densest fog that it has experienced for years. Traffic along the main arteries of the city crawled at funeral pace, with much clanging of bells and hooting of horns and sirens.

It was a fog of the pea-soup variety, and the glaring electric lights in business premises and on the side-walks were dimmed to the semblance of rushlights by the thick, shifting mixture of dirt and atmosphere. The countryside lies quiet under a beautiful white pall of snow. For 33 hours the flakes have been falling continuously. There have been many accidents as a result of the unusual weather conditions.

Two telegraph linesmen who had been working on the Great Eastern Railway at Ilford, a suburb of London, were returning to their homes, walking along the line, where a train loomed out of the fog, and before they could get away had cut down and killed them.

An express train from Leicester to London, while travelling at 50 miles an hour, crashed into a slow train at Romford Bridge, near the metropolis. The engine of the flier was overturned, and several coaches of the slow train smashed to matchwood. Several women and children were killed and 50 cases of injury have been reported so far. The signal showed "line clear," but the frost had made it difficult to operate the arm. and it dropped when it should have been at "danger." A passenger train from Preston, Lancashire, collided with a Southport electric train near Liverpool, and many of the passengers sustained severe shock. Many more were thrown into a momentary panic, and flung themselves down a high embankment.

Later. I Three women have died as a result of the train accident at Romford Bridge. From the country a number of deaths are reported, exposure to the cold being the cause. The telegraph and telephone services generally are disorganised. The steamer Snowdon Grange, from Philadelphia to Leith, in Scotland, has arrived after a prolonged passage owing to the storm. Nhe was fifty days getting across, and had -been given up for lost, the underwriters being on the point of settling claims. AVALANCHE OF SNOW. WOMAN'S BACK BROKEN. London, January 14. The week-end storms in Great Britain were marked by many exciting ineid-/ ents. \ At Sheflipld a church service was rudely interrupted hy a cataract of water that burst through the roof. The con- j gresation had to disperse, hurriedly. At Nottingham a woman was sweeping

in front of her house, when a great- mass of snow slid oft' the roof and completely [ buried her, breaking her b:u-k. Two motor cars ran into a drift 12ft high on a road oil the outskirts of Buxton, in Derbyshire. The passengers and some farm laborers had great difficulty I in digging the vehicles out, and it took I the cars four hours to battle along the 5 mile or two of road that remained to get