FATAL THUNDERSTORM AT INVERCARGILL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1175, 17 November 1883, Page 3

FATAL THUNDERSTORM AT INVERCARGILL.

i The weather for some days had been of a threatening charnoter, and on; Wednesday: afternoon suddenly culminated in a heavy thunderstorm over the town, accompanied by a deluge of rain and bail.- On, the eastern confine of the town is a email station, known at :Ellis Road, and when the storm was at its height, about 4 p.m., several persons were there awaiting the arrival of the out train, for Clinton. Among them were Arthur Crisp and F G- Stone, prominent officials of :the Oddfellows, Manchester Unity, on their: way to establish a Lodge atMataura. While waiting at the door of the shelter shed, a vivid flash of lightning, which was remarked all over the town!,',.struck the station. Crisp; .only survived the shock a short time. Stone was scorched down the arm, and dazed, ; while others felt the effects of the electricity in a slighter degree. The weatherboards of the station were driven off and thrown across the rails, the track of the fluid from one nail to another being visible. A stud of the building was shattered (j and one, of the piles of the platform .split. Crisp was conveyed to the Hospital, but nothing could be done fpr him. Stone went home somewhal stunned. Crisp was a laboring man, but

very widely knowr in the dibtrict as a leading spirit in benevolent and political affairs. He leaves a widow and a large family of young children. On the inner side of Crisp's leg is the representation of a tree distinctly marked as if photographed. The following is the statement of the man Stone, who was with Crisp when the latter was killed by lightning :— ■' About 4.20 prrn. we were standing in the shelter shed at Ellis Road waiting for the outgoing train. Crisp was standing about four feet inside the doorway, with his face to the south. I was close to him, but facing the other way. There had been numerous flashes of lightning, then a lull, when suddenly I felt a sensation as if my knees were drawn towards my my head. A cloud came over my eyes and I remember no more till 1 found myself trying io rise, My hands were cramped, with a tingling sensation, and were discolored. I called out to Crisp, who wns lying on his back about six feet away. I went close to him, and in a few seconds he said, ' Stone, I'm a dead man.' Another man who was in the building got up and ran away and hid himself in a partially built house, but some ladies and children were huddled in a corner, apparently stupefied by the shock. Crisp was afterwards removed to the Hospital, but he was quite dead."

Two more deaths also occurred in Southland from the t same cause. It appears that when. the storm was at its height, Turnbull, a farmer, andjtwo girls named Kilpatrick, a -farmer's daughters on the way home from school, aud Fraser, a farmer, took refuge in the barn of the latter on Forest Hill. They had not been long there when the lightning struck the house, killing the eldest girl, aged 12, and paralysing Fraser's lower extremities and prostrating the othertwo.

About three miles further east a son of Mr Alex. McGregor, a farmer, went to the door about the same time with a hammer in hia hand, and was struck dead. He was a youth of 14 years of age.