APPALLING CATASTROPHE IN SWITZERLAND.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2399, 25 August 1892, Page 3

APPALLING CATASTROPHE IN SWITZERLAND.

Despatches from Paris of July 12th convey the intelligence of a slide of ice and earth on the night proceeding in the mountains overhanging St. Gervais, Savoy. Without a moment’s notice a large number of houses -were buried. The disaster occurred early in the morning, when everybody was asleep. A glacier, which extended from the north-west of Mount Blanc, became detached and swept down the sides of the mountain, carrying the baths in the hamlet of Lafayette with the avalanche. The village was almost totally demolished. The inmates of the baths were awakened at 2.15 a.m. by a sound of rushing waters and a loud crashing noise. Before they were able to leave the buildings a mass of debris of the village and large blocks of ice crashed against them. Thi’ee bath houses were totally destroyed and one partially so, while the fifth sustained no damage. The .avalanche continued into the valley, destroying everything in its course, and the wreckage was swept on for miles into the river Arve, down which corpses and wreckage have been floating all day. The latest eslimate of the number dia l is 130, St. Gervais Les Bains is a watering place with sulphur springs, and a favorite resort in summer.

A search for dead by this calamity on the 13th showed 126 bodies recovered, most of them torn and mangled horribly. In many cases heads were -wrenched off bodies, and in others arms and legs were cut off by the large masses of ice, and some were crushed out of all semblance of humanity. When the glacier sailed down into Bowhaunt, on which mountain stream St. Gervais Les Bains is situated the current was dammed up and the water rose rapidly behind a huge wall of ice. Finally the pressure became so great that the dam was broken, and an immense volume, with tremendous masses of ice, started down the ravine. Many victims, overtaken in their sleep, were instantly swept into the torrent and drowned, and their bodies afterwards mutilated by the floating debris or crushed out of all shape. Of the fifty-seven employees of the baths only nine were saved alive, and seven of these were said to be mortally injured. In the hamlet of Bionassy, which was swept away entirely, thirty-five persons were killed.