SWEPT BY STORM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 March 1941, Page 2

SWEPT BY STORM

FLOOD IN POHANGINA VALLEY. SHEEP AND CATTLE DROWNED.’ (By Telegraph—Press Association.) PALMERSTON N., March 20. More than 200 sheep and lambs and numbers of cattle were drowned, sheepyards and other fencing swept away, the Y.M.C.A. boys’ camp buildings practically obliterated, and hundreds of acres covered with silt and flood debris when a heavy storm broke over the eastern side of the Pohangina Valley, next to the Ruahine Ranges, on Monday night. The Diggers’ Creek bridge is closed to traffic, and the telephone line through the Komako district is still out of order. Borne by a strong north-east wind, the storm broke in the ranges at Piri ' Piri about 8.30 p.m. and worked down \ the valley to reach Pohangina about 10 ! ?m. The main damage occurred in the valley of the Pohangina River, specially where it widens and the flats are used in farming operations. On the township side of the Pohangina River the damage was wholly restricted to the valley bottom. So great was the volume of water poured into the Pohangina River by the raging mountain torrents from the ranges that the river covered the road a mile long on the flat leading from Raumai to the picnic grounds at the bridge across the river.