BIG LAND SLIDE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10023, 20 April 1910, Page 5

BIG LAND SLIDE.

CONSTRUCTION TRAIN OVERWHELMED

TWENTY-FIVE PERSONS KILLED.

United Press Association—By iileotrio Telegraph Copyright Received April 19, 5,40 p.m. OTTAWA, April 19. A landslide on the National TransContinental Railway overwhelmed a construction train at Lataquo, Canada, and 25 persons were killed. snowslide in the rockies, sixty-two Workmen swept AWAY. Details are now to hand by the latest English mail of a previus disaster in Canada in March bst. A cablegram from Toronto says: —Many Uvea b'tve been lost by a snowslide on tho Canadian Pacific Ma'lway between Roger's Pass ana (ilncier in the Rocky Mountains. Telegraphic communication la interrupted, and the accounts ot the disaster as yet are confusing; and uncertain. It seems (hat a gang of one hundred men, mainly Japanese and Italians, were engaged in clearing away a small slide which came down three days before, and many of the workmen were swept down into the canon below.

According to th.3 latest reports, fifty men were killed, half of them Japanese. Fortunately, no passenger trains were, involved in the ruin. The slide occurred during a heavy storm of sleet and rain in one of the worst nights ever experienced in the Rockies. Relief trains, with physicians and nurses, have gone to the scene of the a"ci tent.

Six years ago a house at .Roger's Pass waß buried by a slide, and the agent with his wife and two children perished. The railway heie runs beneath imposing mountain walla, frowning and majestic, through scenery as impressive as any on the continent.Nowhere en the road did the engineers meet greater difficulties, but for twenty-five years the trains ran in safety through the unceasing vigilance of the.management.

Later particulars show that the total number of dead in the snowslide at Roger's Pass is estimated at sixty-two, of whom thirty-seven are Japanese. Nearly all the dead were emloyees of the lailway company. A second disaster was narrowly averted as a train carrying over one hundred passengers had passed a point east of Field Station by only one minute when a elide occurred which buried the track for one thousand feet. The passengers at .Field were thus impisoned between two slides. At Roger's Pass the snow and ice lay thirty feet deep on the track, hardened by the tremendous impact. The work of rescue was hindered by a fierce snow storm, which blew down the sides of the Selkirks as if to." hide the dead for ever from sight.